Colleen Wainwright wanted to do something big for her birthday, so she challenged herself to raise $50,000 in 50 days for WriteGirl!, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that empowers girls through self-expression.
By the eve of her birthday, Wainwright had raised $61,517. How did she do it? She had leveraged the power of people. She had used crowdfunding.
What Is Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is the practice of raising financial capital from large groups of people, typically by using the Internet. Derived from the term “crowdsourcing,” crowdfunding harnesses the enthusiasm of social networks to raise money and pool resources to fund a project important to members of the social network.