“Instead of mailing the owner of FunnyJunk the money, I’m going to send the above drawing of his mother.\u00a0I’m going to try and raise $20,000 and instead send it to the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society.”<\/p>\n
And when he finally received all those bundles of money he assembled them into the big “FU<\/a>” he wanted to send FunnyJunk all along.<\/p>\n Look, you gotta love this guy, and he did raise money for two great charities, but was<\/em> it charity? Or art? Or just revenge masked as charity or maybe something entirely new, “artevengity?”\u00a0 What in the world exactly is it that Indiegogo did?\u00a0 The money eventually wended its way to two big charities, even if it did take a little artistic detour on the way:\u00a0 FU in money bundles. So, it was sort of a charity, even if an angry charity, and that made it Indiegogo material, not Kickstarter material.\u00a0 Kickstarter simply does not provide a platform to fund charitable causes or organizations like National Wildlife Federation and American Cancer Society or even FU FunnyJunk.<\/p>\n After his first success Inman is now on to a more typical arts and culture project with Indiegogo: raise $850,000 to create the Tesla Museum<\/a> in Shoreham, New York. And he is well on his way with close to $500,000<\/a> already raised and more than a month left in the campaign. The Tesla museum is not a charity, as Kickstarter might have defined it, since it is clearly a cultural project with an end goal, but the Tesla museum is significantly different \u00a0than his first project. \u00a0 It is not artevengity.<\/p>\n The bullied bus monitor campaign<\/a>, created by Max Siddorov, \u00a0is again artevengity and that is why it was so successful on Indiegogo and might not have been on Kickstarter. \u00a0Though this project had a clearly defined end goal, which Kickstarter requires, it was still too narrowly a charity. \u00a0The “Lets Give Karen-The Bus Monitor-H Klein A Vacation” had a target of $5000, but unbelievably raised $703,833 on Indiegogo!\u00a0 That’s a vacation chalet in the Rockies. \u00a0It appears artevengity is a money magnet on Indiegogo.<\/p>\n When Oatmeal Inman was asked why he didn’t use Kickstarter, Inman wrote it’s because Kickstarter doesn’t fund charities<\/a> and Indiegogo does. And anyway, he’d already had great success with Indiegogo.<\/p>\n Also, Kickstarter is all or nothing.\u00a0 Kickstarter only disperses the cash if your project meets its projected goal.\u00a0 If not, it returns all the money<\/a> back to the investors and you never see a dime. Indiegogo, however, disperses funds even if you don’t reach your goal. Indiegogo keeps a larger percentage of the money (9%) if you don’t reach your goal, but it still disperses the cash.\u00a0 If you do reach your goal Indiegogo keeps only 4%<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0On the other hand, even if you do meet your goal, Kickstarter is still more expensive<\/a> than Indiegogo since it charges 5% \u00a0which is 1% higher than Indiegogo’s 4% for a successful campaign.<\/p>\n So why use Kickstarter at all?\u00a0 Indiegogo seems to do it all better.\u00a0 Well hold on there, cash-poor cowboy.<\/p>\n Copyright Madalyn Sklar<\/p><\/div>\n Kickstarter is Artworld 2.0.<\/p>\n As pointed out by Patrick Hussy<\/a> at the Guardian this week, Kickstarter has projected it will raise $150 million for the arts in America in 2013. That’s more money than the National Endowment for the Arts disperses in a year. No way around it: that’s amazing.\u00a0 When you look at what sorts of projects Kickstarter funds it is easy to see how they do it.\u00a0 This is art and culture funding, not Indie charity.\u00a0 Kickstarter is the Big Dog on the block, which becomes stunningly clear when you look at their continuously updated stats page<\/a>. They are so successful doing what they have been doing they even resisted changing their business model despite the new JOBS act.\u00a0 In other words, Kickstarter is not heading toward equity crowdfunding<\/a>\u00a0anytime soon. \u00a0Madalyn Sklar<\/a>\u00a0has also posted a helpful comparative piece on this.<\/p>\n Now for the best news:\u00a0 Kickstarter is an easy platform to fund your project. You heard right: Kickstarter will help you fund your artistic project no matter how inexperienced you are at self-financing or how small your project is. That does not mean you will necessarily succeed in raising your funding but if you have that new artistic enterprise, that totally awesome video game idea or knitted-bag line you want to fund, Kickstarter is a good first stop.\u00a0 In their own words:<\/p>\n “Kickstarter is focused on creative projects. We’re a great way for artists, filmmakers, musicians, designers, writers, illustrators, explorers, curators, performers, and others to bring their projects, events, and dreams to life.”<\/p>\n And they do not claim any percentage of your Intellectual Property Rights!\u00a0 What you fund is yours.\u00a0 “Project creators keep 100% ownership of their work.”<\/p>\n![\"Kickstarter](\"https:\/\/webhostinggeeks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/kickstarter-vs-indiegogo-250x230.jpg\")