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FROM A HEART-RATE monitor for sheep to a multimedia horror show, in less than four years Irish crowdfunding site Fund It has given people the chance to get a piece of them all.
The not-for-profit site, set up in 2011 to help people raise money for creative projects, recently passed €3 million in pledges since it went live.
Fund It chief executive Andrew Hetherington told TheJournal.ie it had taken less than a year for the last €1 million to be raised – compared to about 20 months for the milestone to be reached the first time around.
“We are a little bit excited to see how long it takes us to get to €4 million,” he said.
Hetherington said the site had a 73% success rate for people getting their projects off the ground, compared to strike rates of under 50% for many other crowdfunding sites.
“Our success rate is a large part of what we are about – every single project that goes live on our site will have had moderation from us,” he said.
“They will have been given lots of advice from us about what it takes to fundraise.”
More than 1000 projects have been featured on the site and between them all the works have received 53,000 pledges, with the average amount committed from each person over €53.
The reward-based site offers those who pledge various incentives for support – such as the Galway-based Huxley Horror community arts group, which promised a “uniquely-customised” piece of artwork for anyone who gave over €250.
So what’s new
Hetherington said Fund It, which is run by Business to Arts, would be making some tweaks to its site over the coming month so it could capture as much information about what people were trying to do with out projects as possible.
“People are rightly questioning everything about projects – they want to know as much as they can before they decide to support something,” he said.
Fund It will also be running crowdfunding workshops starting in Dublin in December so successful fundraisers can pass on tips about getting their projects off the ground.
Nearly €40,000 for photo projects
Hetherington said some of the most interesting projects had recently come from photographers with three artists raising nearly €40,000 between them.
One, second-time Fund It user Daragh Muldowney, raised over €20,000 for his latest photography book Out of Thin Air - which featured otherworldy shots from Greenland.
He said that crowdfunding meant creative projects which would otherwise remain only ideas could now get the financial backing they needed to be realised.
“I’ve found crowdfunding creates a buzz and a desire from my audience to see the projects succeed, and people feel closer to the idea and a part of the creative process,” he said.
US crowdfunding site Kickstarter recently launched in Ireland, joining other offerings like LinkedFinance and PledgeUp.
It’s possibly someone showing off their capability before putting it up for auction. Like the Christmas Sony hack a couple of years ago
Here’s why this wasn’t a nation state actor. Let’s take a look at an excerpt from the log of the Firewall on my Home Router: (IP’s truncated)
Oct 22 16:26:30: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (186.244.206.xx:15314->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:07: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (83.21.5.xx:63112->109.255.xx.yy:9999 TCP) from module Firewall
Oct 22 16:28:04: [Minor] Port Scan is detected (93.171.199.xx:11943->109.255.xx.yy:23 TCP) from module Firewall
My router (and yours) is scanned thousands of times a day, looking for open ports through which they can connect to webcams, home alarm systems etc etc. Not that they want to spy on you, or steal your stuff. That’s actually quite rare. Instead they will simply turn your devices into internet weapons that will send crafted queries designed to spam other machines, anywhere else on the Net.
It’s not the Russians doing this. It’s gangs of basement dwellers and malcontents. Much ado about nothing in terms of world politics. Be more worried about your shiny new Thermostat.
State sponsored hackers are “sitting in the basement” type hackers who are just employed, plus there’s a lot more of them, what are they on about? They’re really pushing this Russia thing! There’s a few videos of Putin talking to international journalists asking them to actually do their job and report on what’s happening because the U.S. Media are out of control. It’s a sad state of affairs when you get to this stage.
@Linda: Well yes Linda, but with the additional training, education and skill-set that comes with that. They don’t spend their lives scanning Virgin media IP blocks trying to hack home devices. They don’t care about DYN (the company hit yesterday) or their customers, by and large, or perform low grade nuisance attacks in general.
Instead they are busy doing the same thing to IP blocks belonging to infrastructure and governments.
Which is why I think we agree that this was unlikely to be nation state and even if it was Russia are no more likely to be guilty than China, Iran or North Korea if it was.
We agree. I think it’s least likely to be Russia anyway, if they really thought it was them they wouldn’t say it. I mean why this story and not the one where Putin is saying he doesn’t want to get into a war with the U.S but they have to stop moving their nuclear stuff over toward him? If there’s even a chance that the U.S. is trying to start a war, shouldn’t we know this before we worry about who fiddled with Twitter? They’ve done it before and they’re at it again.
This has F-Society written all over it…
I found the discrimination against me as a kid was very prominent, as one of the few vegetarian in school, I really understood how it felt to be frowned upon for being different. Other students would shout ‘winner winner, chicken dinner’ at me when they quite clearly knew I did not eat the low grade chicken there degenerate mum’s would make them scoff on a daily basis.
@Jaque H Doyle, winner winner, chicken dinner. How do you like your steak cooked ?
Someone putin on a show of power in support of his business friend, Trump?
So the US are saying that, at the moment, the Russians are the evil superior cyber power? It could be anyone really. Their tech companies have been farming out manufacturing, data handling and coding etc to the Far East and third world for years chasing the bottom line, so it shouldn’t surprise them if they’re open to both fair and unfair competition, underground practices and even attacks from anywhere in the world. Silicon Valley has the startup and investment gig but the technology is inherently wide open to bad intentioned talent everywhere.
Jasus I hope they don’t DOS attack Eircode… Pizza consumption would grind to a halt!!!
TBH these people bore me. If this is what makes you happy in life you really need to get a life it’s so much more fun!
Us testing the internet kill switch , before martial law is declared all communications will be severed !
Can’t be Anonymous, most of their hacker’s are actually in prison or simply not good enough, so that leaves the Chinese or the Russian’s? My money’s on the commies…
Eh they’re both commies…
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