Indiegogo is one of the top fundraising platforms for independent creators’ projects. However, the site’s users weren’t allowed to post campaigns related to personal initiatives, until now. Indiegogo just launched a site called Life to cater to users’ personal causes and goals.
Users can sign up to create a fundraising campaign in one of several new categories, including “Celebrations,” “Emergencies,” “Sports,” “Medical,” “Community,” and “Education.” This means someone like a college student who can’t afford tuition can get financial help from the online masses, or someone with hefty medical bills can raise funds to make the amount less burdensome. For example, Life highlights user Erin Martin who lost part of her leg and used the site to raise money for a prosthetic that her insurance wouldn’t cover.
The biggest benefit to using Indiegogo Life is there are no platform fees. Users get to keep all the money they raise, because Life’s site says it believes “everyone should have the help they need, when they need it.” To that end, Life also boasts a dedicated team of Customer Happiness agents who personally answer contact requests and offer coaching to users’ who need help with their campaigns.
We’ve seen a lot of impressive creative projects come out of Indiegogo’s platform in the past. Austin-based production studio Rooster Teeth raised a record $2.4 million for its upcoming original film Lazer Team, and Wil Wheaton used the platform to garner $1.2 million for season three of his Geek & Sundry web series TableTop. These examples, of course, don’t even cover all the independent creators who’ve successfully gotten projects off the ground because of Indiegogo fundraising (we highlight many of these creators in our “Fund This” column).
Indiegogo has also seen its fair share of users leveraging the site’s platform for charity causes. In May 2014, PewDiePie raised more than $324,000 for the organization Save the Children. More recently, Hank and John Green raked in $1.2 million to donate to charities chosen by YouTube fans. Charity fundraisers are the closest thing Indiegogo got to personal causes, but now many more forms of personal initiatives are supported.
A rep from Indiegogo said the site will give away $10,000 in contributions ($100 per campaign) to users who launch a fundraiser by the end of 2014. So visit life.indiegogo.com if you’d like to set up a campaign for yourself or someone you know and grab an extra $100.
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