This article was first published on Feb. 8, 2017, and was updated on Feb. 27, 2018, Feb. 11, 2019, Feb. 24, 2020, and March 4, 2021.
Wondering if crowdfunding platforms might be a boost for your new business venture? Companies that are just starting out sometimes need a financial step up to get things going. This is where crowdfunding can help.
What is crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is where you get a lot of people to invest in your idea, rather than finding one person to come up with everything you need. You can use a crowdfunding platform to manage all the collections and give you a central location to share your ideas, along with the materials and videos that explain what you’re trying to accomplish. They take a cut of your donations, and some require setup or promotional fees.
Related: GoDaddy guide to funding a business
Top 21 crowdfunding platforms
Here are 21 crowdfunding sites you can use to fund and fuel your startup. Some of them are more geared to developing products, others are about funding artistic endeavors, and still others are ideally suited to nonprofits. Some sites will collect all the money as it comes in; others won’t collect it until the goal amount is reached.
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- Kickstarter.
- Indiegogo.
- Patreon.
- GoFundMe.
- Chuffed.
- ArtistShare.
- MightyCause.
- InKind.
- Crowdfunder.
- Give.
- Charitable.
- Lending Club.
- AngelList.
- Ulule.
- Funding Circle.
- Seed&Spark.
- Crowdcube.
- GoGetFunding.
- Fundable.
- Fundrazr.
- Kiva.
Let’s take a closer look at each crowdfunding platform.
1. Kickstarter
This platform is so popular, it’s entered our everyday language. Kickstarter is geared more toward creative projects like a new album or writing a book, as well as products and inventions like a personal single-wheel vehicle or a pocket-sized solar charger.
It’s not really for buying equipment or helping a nonprofit, and you don’t get to keep your money unless you reach your goal through financial pledges. Categories include Arts, Comics & Illustration, Design & Tech, Film, Food & Craft, Games, Music and Publishing.
2. Indiegogo
I’m more familiar with this crowdfunding platform, having used it to help a friend get funding for his nonprofit organization. Like Kickstarter, you can use Indiegogo to start up any project or idea. But unlike Kickstarter, you can set up nonprofits on the site.
Indiegogo also allows you to buy funded products on its marketplace. Indiegogo has a lot of inventions and technology you can support too, similar to Kickstarter, in addition to its traditional arts and nonprofit crowdfunding.
3. Patreon
Unlike all the other platforms on this list, which are all one-time donation sites, Patreon is a monthly subscription platform where supporters and donors provide regular monthly contributions, rather than make one bulk payment. You can support projects for as little as $1 per month or as high as you would like to go. It’s sort of like a donated subscription.
The goal is not to support a particular project, but to provide ongoing support for a creative venture or artist, such as supporting your favorite webcomic, band or musician, or even your favorite podcast.
I support the McGillicuddy and Murder’s Pawn Shop and Decoder Ring Theatre podcasts on Patreon because I enjoy what they do. Canadaland has managed to turn its subscription base into a small-but-powerful media criticism and publishing platform.
4. GoFundMe
GoFundMe is the “Hey, can I borrow 50 bucks” of crowdfunding platforms. I see it used mostly for personal emergencies, but it can be used for any number of short-term personal projects.
I’ve seen people use it to cover an emergency vet bill, a trip to the dentist and even for a Kenyan farmer to attend an agricultural conference in Australia.
In an increasing number of cases, people use GoFundMe to raise money to cover uber-high medical bills for terminal and chronic illnesses.
(Last year, we included Crowdrise in this list, although they had been purchased by GoFundMe in 2017. GoFundMe has now folded Crowdrise into the GoFundMe branding, and it has become the charity and nonprofit division of GoFundMe.)
5. Chuffed
Chuffed is a nonprofit crowdfunding site that is only for not-for-profits, charities, social enterprises, community projects, or persons in need, so no inventions or art projects. Pitches are limited to just 50 words, and you’ll promote your cause to your different social networks.
Unlike most other crowdfunding sites, Chuffed will transfer your money as it comes in. No delays as you’re trying to hit targets or reach specific levels before you get your funds. The funds can be transferred to a credit card on a rolling seven-day cycle or to a PayPal account as they come in.
6. ArtistShare
Being a musician can be pricey. And as the husband of a jazz singer and father to three budding musicians, I can attest to that!
So anything you can do to cover costs when you launch an album, promote it or go on tour takes a load off.
That’s where ArtistShare can make a real difference.
The site, which started in 2003 as a “fan-funding” site, is a go-to site for many jazz and classical musicians who want to fund their upcoming projects. Nine of the projects have received Grammy awards, while another 18 have received nominations.
7. MightyCause
MightyCause is a site that’s not geared so much toward business funding as it is for helping “worthy causes” — nonprofit fundraising, donor management, marketing, and peer-to-peer fundraising It lets you fundraise for nonprofits and special events for children and family, education, animals and pets, and even faith-based causes.
NuDay Syria, Doctors Without Borders and Southern Poverty Law Center all use MightyCause for fundraising.
Related: Why now is the best time to solicit donations
8. InKind
This crowdfunding site is unusual in that it’s geared specifically toward restaurants. Because restaurants often have trouble getting funding, it’s great to see InKind try to remedy that.
The way it works is that you get funding by providing gift cards to InKind, and they’ll sell them for you as “House Accounts,” which brings in repeat business.
Related: Restaurant startup basics
9. Seedrs
Seedrs is a UK-based company that puts its companies in front of investors and VCs who are willing to invest in exchange for equity of the startups and other growth companies in Europe. Investors of all kinds can invest in businesses they want to support, and to share in their success.
Seedrs has a simple online process that vets companies along the way, helps them develop their pitch and campaign video. They provide investment guidance, marketing and PR support, and even legal expertise. They’ve helped over £1 billion get invested into more than 1,260 campaigns.
10. GiveWP
GiveWP is a WordPress plugin you can add to your WordPress blog to collect donations from visitors. You can create donation forms, view your statistics and reports, manage donors, and integrate with third-party platforms like Stripe and PayPal.
Unlike every other crowdfunding platform I reviewed, GiveWP does not take any fees based on what you raise.
They make their money selling premium add-ons to their system, which you can use if you need additional functionality. If your startup isn’t a great fit for the other crowdfunding platforms on this list, then maybe Give (and Charitable) are for you.
Related: How to use your blog to fuel startup crowdfunding efforts
11. Charitable
Another WordPress plugin, Charitable lets you collect donations on your website via PayPal, and they don’t charge any transaction fees for credit card donations. You also can use well-known and trusted credit card processors like Stripe and Authorize.net to accept plastic.
The company, WP Charitable, built the plugin because they were “…were tired of seeing non-profits use hosted fundraising platforms that charge hefty fees and strip them of the ability to brand & control their donation pages.”
The tradeoff is that you have to manage your own WordPress blog, or at least know someone who can do it for you.
12. Lending Club
This is a site for investors who want to invest their money but still do a little good. As a borrower, you can borrow up to $40,000 for a personal loan, and the investors will make between 5.5 and 7.7% as you repay the loan with interest. It’s easier to get a loan on Lending Club than through a normal bank, and they’re more likely to fund unusual projects and ideas.
It’s also great for people who need to borrow some money for, say, car repairs, getting a new laptop because their old one crapped out or even a minor medical procedure.
13. AngelList
If your business idea didn’t pan out, don’t give up. Give AngelList a shot. Through this site, you can apply for a job at more than 60,000 startups with a single application, and many of them let you work remotely. It’s the only site I found that lets you do that, although that has likely changed during the pandemic.
But if you’re looking for a place to invest, then AngelList has those opportunities as well. Oh, and you can still apply for funding, too. Just fill out an application, and you’ll be introduced to potential investors and lenders. Plus, it’s a great place to hire additional staffers.
14. Ulule
I added Ulele to the list of top crowdfunding platforms partly because it’s an international crowdfunding platform, but also because I like to say the name. Ulule. Ulule. Ulule. It’s like saying ukulele, but without the “K.”
Ulule funds mostly creative projects and they’ve helped more than 16,000 artists and entrepreneurs in 198 countries.
Don’t let their international focus frighten you, though. The company is headquartered in Paris, with offices in Barcelona, Rome, Antwerp and Montreal. If you have a worthwhile project you believe in, give Ulule a try.
Related: 10 hot crafts to make and sell
15. Funding Circle
A competitor to Lending Club, Funding Circle will grant between $25,000 and $50,000 in a variety of different small business loan options — interest rates run between 4.99 and 27.79% — as well as give you the option to invest money. You can apply for SBA 7(a) loans, term loans, working capital loans, invoice factoring, line of credit, and even Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans that are being offered as part of the U.S. government’s COVID-19 relief measures.
16. Seed&Spark
If we have music-based platforms, then it stands to reason we’d have at least one for filmmakers. Enter Seed&Spark, the crowdfunding platform for movie makers around the world.
Whether it’s documentaries, dramatic films or offbeat comedies, you can get funding for your movie and even watch others’ contributions.
You can also watch the movies that are produced on their website or your Apple TV or Roku.
17. Crowdcube
Crowdcube is another online investing site that lets investors choose which projects they want to back, and they’re celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. It’s a great way for entrepreneurs to spread the risk of their new ventures a bit, while still getting the “grown-up” funding of investors without needing to deal with banks and financial institutions that typically aren’t interested in smaller projects.
In their 10 years, they’ve invested over £1 billion into 1,000 projects with 1 million investors. Crowdcube is based in the UK, so it may be geared more toward the UK/European crowd. But if you’re based in the United States, it’s still worth a try if you want an international funding source.
18. GoGetFunding
I like the directness of this website’s name as if it’s a command and not just an explanation of what they do. Similar to GoFundMe, GoGetFunding will let you raise funds for any cause, whether personal, nonprofit or even a business.
I saw campaigns raising funds to help a beloved pet rabbit that stopped eating, a medical missions trip to Zambia, a musician in Texas produce his first EP, and a depressing number of requests to help people cover their life-saving medical costs.
If you have a worthy cause to support and people to help, GoGetFunding and GoSaveTheWorld.
19. Fundable
Fundable is a sort of crowdsourced venture capital. You post your business or idea on Fundable, and investors can pledge money to your project, just like Kickstarter.
The only difference is, you have some skin in the game — it costs $179 per month to be on Fundable, and they take 3.5% + $.30 of every transaction. You can give rewards (items like prizes or product pre-orders) or give equity in your company, depending on the amount you need to raise (i.e. give rewards for $1,000 – $50,000, and equity for $50,000 – $10 million).
And like Kickstarter, the rewards campaigns are all or nothing. If you don’t meet your goal, you don’t get any money.
20. FundRazr
FundRazr is brand-new to this list, and I was happy to add it because, while it’s like a lot of the other crowd-funding platforms on this list, it has something none of the others do: a totally free option for artists and creatives! That’s because your donors are asked to “tip” FundRazr as a way to keep the service free for you.
(There is still the traditional credit card processing fee of 2.9% + $.30, but that’s charged by the third-party processors, not FundRazr.)
And, FundRazr will even allow third-party companies, such as agencies, professional fundraisers, and representatives, to set up fundraising campaigns on behalf of an organization or person.
They even offer microprojects, which are repeatable, small projects that happen on a case-by-case basis, such as Nowzad, the nonprofit that helps soldiers in war zones bring home cats and dogs they have rescued while in-country.
21. Kiva
Kiva is a special crowdfunding platform and one I truly appreciate: The money raised here is not for you. Rather, you can become a micro-lender to entrepreneurs and artists all over the world.
Whether it’s lending $4,400 to a women’s farming group in Sierra Leone to buy seeds and rent a tractor, or $2,075 to a woman who owns a store in Brazil that sells mobile phone accessories, you can loan a small amount to any borrower you choose. Plus, as the loan is paid back, you can make a little bit of money in return. (They have a 96.8% repayment rate.)
This is a way to help deserving individuals, especially in underserved parts of the world, get just a little bit of money to make a vast difference in their lives.
It’s also a great way to teach young kids about investing and loans, while educating them about artists and life around the world. Invest (loan) $100 to a few people, and then count the money that comes back.
This can teach your kids about personal responsibility, investing, and smart money management. Plus, it makes you feel really good!
Crowdfund for success
Regardless of the work you want to do, the goals you want to accomplish, or the lives you want to change and save, there are crowdfunding platforms of all sizes, aims and areas of focus. There are investors who want to see a return on their loans, and there are sites where the only aim is to fund creative projects or lifesaving nonprofits.
Figure out your end goal, and start your research. Find a platform that will suit you and your desires, and then go all in.
Focus on that one platform and that one goal, and tell everyone about it, until you raise your funds.
Part of being an entrepreneur is having the drive and passion to ask for money when you need it. These crowdfunding platforms make asking for that money much easier, and even let you give your donors and supporters a little something in return.
Note: All rates and fees were current at the time of writing, but are subject to change. Check each crowdfunding platform for the most up-to-date information.
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