Crowdfunding Now!

One of my friends is running a Crowdfunding campaign and just alerted me to a potential problem. It seems one of his campaign donors just called with a concern.  The donor's credit card company alerted him that there might be a fraudulent charge related to a  crowdfunding  campaign donation.   The  crowdfunding  campaign  donation was followed immediately by a bogus $1.50 charge to a London-based travel agency. The card company worries that this might be a precursor to bigger, larger fraudulent charges and transactions tied to  crowdfunding  campaign donations. This is the extent of my knowledge, but I know I'll be checking my Visa account! Any other crowdfunding  campaigns or donors have similar issues?  

Crowdfunding News 12/27/12   OneMedForum Panelist Aftab Jamil of BDO: Crowdfunding in Life Sciences is ... OneMedPlace (blog) As part of our look into the impact of the JOBS Act on emerging growth companies, OneMedForum will feature a panel devoted to the subject of crowdfunding in life sciences and new investment strategies following the implementation of this groundbreaking ... See all stories on this topic » OneMedPlace (blog) NYT: Equity Crowdfunding Rules Unlikely Till 2014 TPM The White House and Congress made much fanfare of passing a bill into law, the JOBS Act ( Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act), in March 2012, pointing out it would allow for "equity crowdfunding ," or the ability for budding entrepreneurs to take to the ... See all stories on this topic » 2012 Year in Review: Crowdfunding in the Mainstream, Good or Bad News for ... Core77.com (blog) It seems like every day the editors at Core77 receive at least a dozen pleas fro...

Author William Michael Cunningham will discuss his new book at the HUB on February 14th from 5-7pm. About the Book: On April 5, 2012, President Barack Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, better known as the JOBS Act. The act is designed to “reopen American capital markets to small companies,” defined in the act as Emerging Growth Companies. This is one of the most significant legislative initiatives in finance since the Securities and Exchange Acts of 1933 and 1934, and it opens up fund ing to a slew of companies previously shut out of the capital markets. How can you get in on the new funding opportunities? That’s what The JOBS Act: Crowdfunding for Small Businesses and Startups is all about. Investment expert William Michael Cunningham shows how the new law will enable you to use the internet to raise significant amounts of capital funding for your startup. RSVP: http://tweetvite.com/event/JOBSAct

The Black Male Achievement (BMA) Fellowship is a new fellowship program established by Open Society Foundations and Echoing Green dedicated to improve the life outcomes of black men and boys in the U.S. It is the first fellowship program of its kind that targets social entrepreneurs who are starting up new and innovative organizations in the field of black male achievement. The application for the 2013 BMA Fellowship will be available online from December 4th 2012-January 7th 2013. http://www.echoinggreen.org/bma-fellowship#Assessment

Since President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act last spring, the most successful crowdfunding campaign — for an e-paper wristwatch called Pebble Watch — raised $10 million. Another campaign — this one for a video game, raised $6.3 million from 90,000 fans online — shows that companies with innovative products and services can raise significant amounts of money online. In about six months, the beleaguered Securities and Exchange Commission will put forward rules that will govern how companies can raise equity capital using crowdfunding . It has been slow going. The SEC, staggered by its role in the financial crisis, is extraordinarily cautious now. The agency remains under the influence of the industry it regulates, which is frightened by crowdfunding . Industry officials have built obstacles in the SEC’s path to creating crowdfunding rules. Critics of crowdfunding say that the risk of fraud is high, but their case is weak given that individual dollar in...

Crowdfunding Today 12/22/12 Crowd-Funding Draws Donations for Sandy Relief ABC News In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, some who lost their homes or businesses have turned to crowd-funding websites to elicit a faster and more direct response than they could expect from the government or traditional charities. While Congress ... See all stories on this topic » ABC News Light by Moore's Cloud Goes for Homegrown Crowdfunding Technabob (blog) About a month ago, a project launched on Kickstarter called the Light by Moore's Cloud. Unfortunately, the project failed to meet its funding goal, despite gathering about 2,000 supporters. With the company's Kickstarter funding plans foiled, it has ... See all stories on this topic » Technabob (blog) 6 Women Entrepreneurs To Watch Empowering People Through Crowdfunding ... Crowdsourcing.org 6 Women Entrepreneurs To Watch Empowering People Through Crowdfunding Platforms: Piggybackr, SoM...

Crowdfunding Today 12/21/12 An Xconomy Experiment in Crowdfunding , Colorado Style Xconomy Brad Feld and other partners at Boulder's Foundry Group, along with TechStars' David Cohen, have taken it upon themselves to launch a crowdfunding initiative to bring Xconomy to the Colorado Front Range. You can find more information about their effort ... See all stories on this topic » Fans Launch Save Interplay Crowdfunding Campaign Gamespy.com Oh, Internet. Just when I think I've seen everything you've got to offer, what with all of your cats, karate masters beating up pimps, and accurate predictions for the end times, you come out of nowhere and surprise me with this: the Save Interplay ... See all stories on this topic » JulsList.com officially launches crowd funding platform Crowdsourcing.org Summary JulsList.com launches, opening up their crowd funding platform to more prospective projects. Description JulsList.com officially launches its ...

Crowdfunding  as of Dec 21 2012 Crowdfunding : The Future Of The Film Industry? Forbes Johnson's new production company, Crowdfund Films, intends to bring old-school Hollywood to the tech age. A veteran producer with credits that include Contraband, I Love You, Man, Secretariat, Malibu's Most Wanted, and A Walk to Remember, Johnson ... See all stories on this topic » Forbes Crowdfunding an HIV Vaccine: Insane or Genius? Huffington Post "With regards to emerging HIV research, all bets are off," Jenna* told me over the phone last week. As the director of a multimillion dollar AIDS charity, she should know. "Five years ago, if you would have said that a man could be cured of HIV through ... See all stories on this topic » Diving into Equity Crowdfunding with Jeff Lynn, CEO of Seedrs Crowdsourcing.org Editor's Note: The following comes to us from Jonathan Sandlund, a crowdfunding evangelist and founder of the Crowd Cafe an...

Crowdfunding Today 12/19 Resolution Independent Turns to Crowd Funding for 'Wynter Dark' (Exclusive) Hollywood Reporter LONDON – Australian entertainment company Resolution Independent is turning to crowd funding to bankroll the roll out across tablets and e-readers of its graphic novel Wynter Dark, a post-apocalyptic new ice age adventure set in New York. our editor ... See all stories on this topic » AngelList Moves Into Crowdfunding BostInno (blog) AngelList was a big supporter of the JOBS Act, the legislation passed earlier this year that eased access to capital for startups and legalized crowdfunding . And I thought back then that the platform would likely consider facilitating crowdfunding once ... See all stories on this topic » Piwik starts crowdfunding drive for version 2.0 The H The Piwik developers have announced that they are starting a crowdfunding drive to support new features that they want to integrate into the open source anal...

I noted the creation of a Jewish crowdfunding website: "The global Jewish community is filled with creative and innovative ideas that could benefit our people both in Israel and around the world. Unfortunately, many do not succeed. Why? Funding. Well, Jewcer is here to change that. We are offering something extraordinary — a crowdfunding platform that promotes collaboration and trust both within and around our community to develop and implement projects linked to the Jewish people and/or Israel." I am glad to see the development of targeted, focused crowdfunding  website. I expect more to be created....

According to news sources, "The Ontario Securities Commission released a paper today intended to initiate a broad consultative process to consider a number of potential new capital raising prospectus exemptions.." including crowdfunding. This is another example of a foreign regulatory agency beating the SEC (and the U.S.) to the punch. The paper examines how several countries, "including the U.S., Australia and the U.K.", manage the exemption process. According to one review, these countries generally base exemptions on one or more of the following: investor attributes (such as income and financial assets);  relationships with the issuer (such as the family, friends and business associates exemption available in jurisdictions other than Ontario);  investment size (such as Ontario's $150,000 minimum investment amount exemption);  disclosure;  'crowdfunding'; and  offering size." You can download the paper here .

Crowdfunding today 12/17/12 Daniel Ellsberg: Crowd Funding the Right to Know Huffington Post (blog) "A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know." -- Judge Murray Gurfein, Pentagon Papers ... See all stories on this topic » Crowdfunding could revolutionise lending, says Andrew Haldane Telegraph.co.uk Andrew Haldane said that he believed the rise of peer-to-peer lenders such as Zopa and Funding Circle - which match up companies needing money with investors - and crowdfunding , where small amounts are raised from a number of funders, will challenge ... See all stories on this topic » Telegraph.co.uk Crowdfunding's Not About You Daily Crowdsource I peruse a lot of crowdfunding campaigns in the course of a single day. Some of them catch my attention immediately. Not only that, ...