Five Things that Surprised Me about Crowd-funding

The campaign is drawing to a close.  Though I am sure to have many thoughts and reflections (and photographs!) to share when all is said and done, tonight I would like to share this brief list of anecdotes, before taking a much needed break (allowing the campaign to take care of itself for these last few days).  It has been wondrous but my bones are tired and I need to ignore the internet for a while.  In the mean time...

5 things that surprised me about crowd funding:

People that I thought were lurkers turned out to be donors and people that I thought would be donors tended to lurk.

Young people with less income and less job security were more likely to donate than older people with more income and more job security, apparently due to a difference in familiarity with the use of crowd-funding and social media.  (Though there were a higher number of younger donors, older more established donors were more likely to offer higher amounts of money and specify they wanted no material object in return.)

Crowdfunding proves that the number of Facebook friends you have has a concrete, calculable monetary value.

It is more important that people like what you say, it is less important if they repeat it.

People want to feel pity for you, but they hate to feel awkward around people who seem hopeless.  Finding ways to turn personal suffering into something life-affirming for others is probably the core to crowd-funding successfully.  Every campaign I saw, including the creative projects, had a sob story at their core.  It all boils down to a fascinating culture of profit from misery.  Strange and sometimes sad and always beautiful.