7 Crowdfunding Projects From Around The World

Ben Hamilton - Fri, Dec 12nd, 2011 4:50pm

Whilst primarily a UK based crowdfunding platform, PleaseFund.Us and it’s community extends across the globe and is essentially accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. You can pledge towards a project or be a project owner yourself wherever you are in the world, it matters not (unlike other platforms). We already have projects on our platform from Italy, Africa, Canada and the U.S.

Tuskegee P-51B and Ferald are projects based over the other side of the Atlantic, Shakespeare in Africa is a project sourced from Uganda (whilst GiveMeTap also has African connections), and One Day in Venice will be filmed in the sinking city (if successfully funded). With more and more projects coming in from all over the world, with places I’ve never been before, it’s tempting to take some time off and visit a few. Let’s hope Alakazam is successfully funded and then I won’t have to worry about choosing where to go!

That said, I’ve always wanted to go to Africa and I’m debating pledging towards Shakespeare in Africa so that I can go. This theatre company from Uganda hopes to share their Africanisation of Shakespeare works and hope to broadcast their first project, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in late March next year. If funded, Shakespeare Theatre Uganda will be able to educate African communities on a large scale, as well as establishing reading clubs in every district the theatre company visits. The most generous of backers will get the chance to have a 3 day tour of all the local Ugandan locations, meet the actors and experience Shakespeare in Africa first hand.

Returning to the PleaseFund.Us hometown, one of our latest UK projects Without the Beatles is a full length documentary that explores some of the strangest influences that the Beatles have had on the world.  The documentary is only partly made but already features interviews with the likes of Terry Gulliam, Michael Palin, Nancy Sinatra, the Beach Boys, Bon Jovi and David Attenborough. With pledge rewards such as two of Paul McCartney’s plectrums, a signed vinyl of the Beatles’ Revolver album and even a Epiphone John Lennon acoustic guitar signed by many contributors to the film (just to name a few), Des Burkinshaw (an ex-BBC director/producer) is hoping to get successfully funded so that he can travel to India, America and Australia in order to finish his project which has already been two years in the making.

The international exposure and recognition that projects can get is what’s so amazing about crowdfunding, however it’s important for any Project owner wanting to entice global backers to offer pledge rewards that are attainable (and accessible) for the backer, no matter where they are in the world. A tour round a film set in China for example might not be very accessible for someone pledging in the UK (especially if travel expenses aren’t included).

On the flip side, whilst the PleaseFund.Us platform can expose your project to all of our followers across the globe, a project will very rarely be successful without it’s own network of supporters and followers (it’s own target audience): It can be tempting to encourage the most amount of backers possible by making it accessible on a global scale, but sometimes it can pay off to think small and put all your energy into focusing on your project’s natural target audience. That said, there’s nothing preventing you from doing both. Some of the best projects in fact will ensure that they have a range of pledges that will appeal to the widest audience possible: something for their core followers, something for the casual browser and something for the international backer.

A project’s pledge rewards must have depth, a range of values that are tiered accordingly, and something accessible to international backers if a project owner wants as wide an audience as possible.

At the end of the day, the more a project has to offer, the better.

About the author:

Ben Hamilton is a Community Manager for PleaseFund.Us. If you need any help or advice about crowdfunding (or perhaps you'd just like a chat), drop him a line at: ben@pleasefund.us