Today, popular crowdfunding platform Indiegogo has launched a new service called ‘Indiegogo Life’. This branch of the site is the new destination for people to raise money for a wide range of personal causes. These include emergencies, celebrations, faith, sports, pets, and volunteer related fundraising campaigns. The best part? These projects are free to run – Indiegogo will not charge the typical 4 to 9 % fee for projects posted on Indiegogo Life, whose creators will only have to pay credit card processing fees.
This shift in their service comes after the company has been seeing these kinds of projects gain popularity over the last few years. According to a TechCrunch post, Indiegogo’s CEO Slava Rubin said:
“We’ve always been open to any campaign … In 2010 we started seeing more ‘personal cause’ campaigns like life event fundraisers.”
In a video featured on the Indiegogo Blog Rubin opens up about his own experiences trying to raise money in 2005 for his charity, Music Against Myeloma. His father died from the disease when he was 15, and this was his way of dealing with that experience in a positive way. Back then they used tools like email and MySpace to raise awareness which was often frustrating and not very successful.
Indiegogo wants to help make it easier to fundraise online after being inspired by their own experiences and by projects they have seen. Indiegogo Life includes an easy set-up, social media tools that make spreading your fundraiser easier, and one-on-one email support. They have taken some of the more advanced tools like analytics out of the Indiegogo Life service. The idea was to keep it simple because fundraising for personal causes is different than crowdfunding projects being run by startups, for example.
The Indiegogo Life page contains many uplifting examples of people who have used Indiegogo for personal fundraising and really made a difference. One story that was shared was from the project Leg Up: Prosthetic Running Leg, which raised over $22K on Indiegogo in February 2014:
“Active mother of two Erin Martin, a five-time marathoner, lost her leg below the knee to an infection—and with it, she thought, her ability to run. She raised money for a special prosthetic leg, something her health insurance wouldn’t cover, and is now able to run again with her children, even completing a recent 5K.”
The fact that Indiegogo has embraced personal cause projects is great. Kickstarter, one of Indiegogo’s closest competitors, doesn’t allow funding for personal projects. This gives Indiegogo a competitive edge by allowing projects that Kickstarter would refuse. Other sites focus more specifically on personal cause projects like GoFundMe, GiveForward, and Red Basket. Some of these services are free but many charge small fees like GoFundMe, who charges around 5%.
Indiegogo is a platform that is well-known compared to most, and has been working with new services to try and make it as easy as possible for people to raise money for whatever they think is important. They have also recently announced that they are testing a backer insurance option to make the process more secure for those who support campaigns on their platform.
