A Great Way to Fund All Kinds of Projects!


Earlier this year Molly Ivins, a local writer with national impact passed away from cancer. She had a great impact on her community and some of her neighbors are putting together a campaign to raise money for a bench in her honor in a local Austin park. I heard about this when it was posted on the HerDomain listserv last Friday and it triggered a vague memory of an online site that helps people organize that kind of fundraising.

Fundable lets groups of people pool funds to make purchases or raise money. Similar to online auctions, Fundable's pages, called "group actions," are created by people who use this site. Each group action has a description of how much money needs to be collected and what it will do. Once enough pledges (not payments) have been collected, Fundable turns them into real payments and sends the total to the group action's organizer.

No one takes a risk when making a pledge: if a group action expires before reaching its total in pledges, Fundable deletes all pledges and never charges money. This lets you participate in a group purchase or fundraiser without worrying about what other people will do. No one pays until and unless everyone else makes a pledge.

While there is no cost to set up a group action, once the group action is complete and the funds have been raised, Fundable charges a 7% handling fee for acting as the escrow agent.

I don't know if the neighborhood group will use this for the tribute bench for Molly, but I'm glad I was reminded of the organization.

rg