Kickstarter

If you haven't heard of it, Kickstarter is a website for people to gather funding for their creative projects. They make a page that describes what they intend to do and ask for pledges to help kickstart it. Different pledge levels get you different rewards. For $100 you might get a t-shirt, or $150 a personal phone call thanking you, or whatever. It depends on the project.

Sometimes I waste time on Kickstarter to see what people are doing. There are a lot of album recordings, documentaries, photography books, comics, clothes, etc.

I never actually pledged until now. There's a young man trying to earn enough pledges to make a documentary about finding the love of his life, Tom,  being threatened at gunpoint by Tom's father, and ultimately losing Tom to an accident on a rooftop. He wasn't even allowed to go to the funeral. It was just so heartbreaking, and behavior like that has to stop. I pledged $5 because I think this is a story that needs to be told.

Pledging is different than donating. This project has to raise $300,000 in a certain time period or it doesn't get funded. Even though I pledge the money, it may not get charged to my account. It runs through Amazon actually. Once you decide to pledge, it takes you to your Amazon account to finish the transaction.

Anyway, check out Kickstarter to see if there's anything happening that you support. I think people, innovators, entrepreneurs, artists.....all need to be encouraged. What better way of doing that than saying, "your idea is so good, I'm going to back you with money." We can all be venture capitalists.