Crowd funding has the capacity to do much good and bring joy to sponsors as well benefit the lives of individual people in need of money.
Crowdfunding is capable of funding a wide variety of projects including: food, fashion, journalism, publishing, music, photography, technology, and many more. These projects bring joy not only to the project team, but also to sponsors and customers who partake in the success of a project.
For example: There are fans who love movies and video games from the past who are willing to revitalize a franchise with their collective donations. Take Super Troopers 2 for example. “Super Troopers” is a much loved movie with a cult following and fans to this day still reference the famous “meow” from the first movie.
According to their Indiegogo page, film making team Broken Lizards Industries launched a campaign to raise money for the creation of the sequel. According to their page, the campaign has raised over $4 million, exceeding their goal by 213 percent. Without the benefit of crowdfunding, concepts like “Super Troopers 2” may have never had the opportunity to have begun production of a sequel.
Example #2: Mighty No. 9 has its roots in the legacy of Megaman. Megaman was a popular video game series in the 8-bit era, but the Megaman series found itself declining as technology advanced and the 2-D side scrolling game had trouble adapting to an age where three dimensional movement ruled. Megaman saw a flow of progressively failing games until the franchise became a topic of obscurity.
Mighty No. 9 is a project led by Keji Inafune. Inafune has been involved in numerous Megaman games with Capcom, a popular video game publisher, but has since left Capcom and founded Comcept in order to create more games.
With no access to the name Megaman, Inafune decided to create Mighty No.9 as a spiritual successor to the popular franchise. Megaman fans everywhere were drawn to Mighty No.9 immediately as there have been no new Megaman games in years. The game is set to release in quarter one of 2016 as a result of a successful crowd funding campaign on Kickstarter.
Another aspect of crowdfunding is personal crowd funding. Gofundme.com allows people to contribute to a myriad of noble causes. From families trying to conceive a child with the aid of costly procedures, to adults and children suffering from diseases.
Average people are able to benefit from crowdfunding and use it to recover from a trauma, tragedy, or use it to drastically improve their lives using money that they would have not otherwise been able to procure.
Gofundme page “help Jesse” is seeking donations for a 4-year-old who suffers from brain tumors. Jesse has had two brain surgeries and is beginning chemotherapy, according to the page.
It’s no secret that the cost of medical care totals up to an astronomical amount of money, but crowdfunding allows people who are suffering from atrocious diseases to bear the crippling costs of treatment necessary to live.
Crowdfunding breathes life into beloved nostalgic franchises that warms the hearts of reminiscent fans everywhere, but this fact is belittled by the greater good of crowdfunding.
When a community whether local or online gathers together to support a dying child, or when people rally together to pay for the tuition of a struggling college student those faced with adversity are able to be helped by the generosity of others.
Crowdfunding may just be a manifestation of human sympathy and kindness when strangers are able to donate selflessly to someone in need.