Crowdfunding -- Is That A Good Option for Funding Your Child's Birthday Party?
Most of you may have seen the ABC news story on Crowdfunding Birthday Parties. (If not, we have PDF'd the article and you can download it at the end of this post.) Most people are familiar with crowdfunding as a means of funding companies or new products (see the Wikipedia article on the top crowdfunded projects and of course, the corresponding article from Entrepreneur on 4 Famous Crowdfunding Fails .)
The choice to crowdfund or not for your child's birthday party is usually a tradeoff of privacy versus capability. Many bloggers have weighed in with the usual mix of condemnation, approval, admiration and attention seeking (troll) posing.
However there are times where crowdfunding can be a viable option -- such as when a child has a large army of well wishers that want to contribute to make a child's birthday memorable or recent financial setbacks may endanger a long-planned (and contracted for) event.
One successful GoFundMe event I'm aware of in our town gathered tens of thousands of dollars to help a family whose house had burned down and whose insurance had lapsed.
Crowdfunding, like most portions of the connected economy can be misused but can be helpful to many families. For those readers interested in a deeper look, I've PDF'd a number of reports from Forbes, Entreprenuer, ABC News and Wikipedia that take a look at the top ten crowdfunding sites, and give considerations on the process of crowdfunding. Enter your email after clicking this link to get them.
