CrowdFunder: The Power of the Crowd in the Community

CrowdFunder is a great new site that helps individuals raising money within their communities by uniting people with common interests. The concept is pretty self-explanatory and follows the power of the crowdsourcing model: a little money x a lot of people = the power of crowdfunding. Essentially it works the same way as charity sponsorship sites like Just Giving, with one crucial difference: if the total isn’t achieved in the time specified everyone gets their money back.

Rather than being charity-driven the site revolves around community-based projects, aiming to help users raise funds by ‘leveraging your offline and online reputations in the community where you live’ and making it easy to collect from a group of your friends for non-charitable donations ie to communally pay for a party / buy a present / sponsor the creation of your entrepreneurial brainwaves.

Currently in beta in Boulder, Colorado, though hopefully soon to be rolled out further, the site has an array of school teams, community projects and personal requests a well as larger charity listings asking for anything from $50 - $5000.

CrowdFunder

[via alldaybuffet]