2013 Crowdfunding: A Best Of
Crowdfunding Advisors, FundRazr Team
There’s nothing like the launch of a new year to prompt thoughtful reflection on the one that just passed. As it happens, 2013 was a phenomenal 12-month stretch for FundRazr’s various help-seeking crusades. Many, many campaigns met their financial goals and many, many causes were the fortunate beneficiaries of a generous flow of the milk of human kindness.
A scan of eight of 2013’s most interesting and popular campaigns — a list that dabbles in across-the-board categories including science, family, community, non-profit, arts, education, veterans and travel — reveals an impressive snapshot of the kind of successes on the books for 2013, all characterized by generosity and the home truth of the simple maxim: ask and ye shall receive.
Take, for one, the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund, established to raise money for the legal defence campaign of Edward Snowden. The only fund endorsed by Snowden and WikiLeaks, this FundRazr-sponsored effort raised $98,064 from 2,156 contributors over the 165 days it ran.
Or, for another, the Christmas Pyjama Drive, a Vancouver-based initiative led by nine-year-old Reese Shelly to outfit disadvantaged children with the basic pleasure that is a pair of pyjamas. In the 54 days it’s been running, this cause has attracted 44 contributors with pledges of $47,983.
Amani’s Big Challenge is a campaign to purchase and build a new education centre in Arusha, Tanzania, that will rescue children from a life on the street. Over 44 weeks, 139 contributors raised $15,450 for this praiseworthy endeavour.
Choose Love sought financial help to fund the travel of a woman named Taughnee, who lives in Alaska, to visit her ailing boyfriend, who lives in Paris. This romantic campaign tugged at the hearts of many, and the $4,540 73 contributors raised enabled Taughnee to get to France to see her love. In the spring, the couple got engaged.
The campaign seeking financial assistance for the family left behind by Special Agent/Sgt. Joseph Peters, a member of the US Army Criminal Investigation Command who was killed in Afghanistan last October, drew a lot of response. More than 100 contributors raised $8,369 for his wife and young son.
The 4th Trimester Bodies Project — an ongoing photo documentary celebrating the post-partum female — raised $16,009 from 274 generous souls. And a fundraising page seeking financial aid for a mom and baby struck by an alleged drunk driver in Seattle drew $73,326 from 1,151 sympathetic contributors over the 43 weeks this campaign ran.
The most popular FundRazr campaign in 2013 was American Gut, the world’s largest open-source science project aimed at understanding the microbial diversity of the human gut. For 41 weeks in 2013, 2,723 contributors committed $400,314 to the world’s pursuit of a better grasp of which microbes live in our gut, skin and mouth.
Feeling inspired?
Folks with a worthy cause to fund might start a FundRazr campaign of their own in 2014 on whose success we might well be looking back in next year’s New Year reflection!
