When South Florida Taiko performance group Fushu Daiko needed to add to their performance drum pool, who did they turn to? Friends, fans, and strangers…with the help of Kickstarter.com.

What is Kickstarter? Kickstarter is a website that helps fund creative projects. Every week thousands of people pledge money to fund projects. The projects range from music, theatre, technology, publishing, among other things.  The site is based on a all-or-nothing system. Every Kickstarter project must be fully funded before its time expires or no money changes hands.

Easy Process – Creating a new project is easy. Once you create an account, users click the “Start Your Project” button on the “Start” page. You’ll be asked to review and confirm the Kickstarter Guidelines, and voilà you can start putting your project together. You will have to give something back depending on the level of monies paid (t-shirt, CD’s, autographed photos, name in the credits…The larger the donation, the better swag you get). The project is then submitted to the folks at Kickstarter for review, if everything meets the guidelines you are ready to start receiving funds.

Fushu Daiko didn’t know what to expect when they first turned to Kickstarter. “In over 20 years, this is the first time we’ve done any organized fundraising and we weren’t sure how it would go” said Jennifer Hoffman, Taiko performer and the group member that posted the Kickstarter project request. Ms. Hoffman continues, “We kept our goal amount low and our hopes high”.

The group set a project goal of $3000 and gave the project a few weeks to fund. As of this writing they are at $4,638, and hope to reach the $5000 needed to purchase all the drums they hope they could.

As you can see, the site is great for funding small projects. It can help with funding much larger projects just as well. One project has broken the Kickstarter record for receive the most donations is Double Fine Adventure with 87,142 backers; they raised $3,336,371, way above their $400,000 goal.

In closing, if you have a project that you have wanted to start and just don’t have the funds needed to get it off the ground, try Kickstarer.com.  Those Angel investors are lurking around just waiting to give you money.

Checkout all the great projects today: http://www.Kickstarter.com

Start with Fushu Daiko and help get them to the $5000 goal they are so close to reaching:

Fushu Daiko on Kickstarter: http://kck.st/GDhDfJ

Twitter: @fushudaiko

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fushudaiko

YouTube:  http://www.youtube.com/fushudaiko

- @gasparem