Indiegogo, Razoo and StartSomeGood: Learn how they work from Tucsonans who tried them

This month's Café is going to be fascinating for anyone thinking about raising money for projects, or a cause, or even themselves. We will be talking to three Tucsonans who have direct experience with new online fundraising tools similar to Kickstarter.

When: Tuesday, Dec. 11th from 5:30-7:00pm, with time for networking afterward.
Where: Joel D. Valdez Main Library, 4th floor Board Room.The library is located at 101 N. Stone Ave., and the garage is best reached from Alameda and Stone.
Cost: Free. Parking in the garage under the library is free after 5:00pm.

Why are these new tools attractive?

• You've built a solid following on Facebook and Twitter? These services are built to mesh with your online supporters via social media and take advantage of the easy shareability.
• Good ideas don't have to fit a mold.
• Capital can come from more sources, a democratization of funding. 
• Funding sources less limited by geography.
• If you are an entrepreneur, you retain 100% of your company's equity.
• Creative people have more control over their project, more independence.

Panelists:

• Leslie Ann Epperson raised $7,000 to complete the filming of a documentary of the All Souls Procession using Indiegogo.
• Marge Pellegrino helped raise nearly $9,000 for the Hopi Foundation's Owl and Panther Project using Razoo.
• Hildy Gottlieb raised $2,000 with StartSomeGood for a Changemaker Scholarship campaign benefiting her nonprofit Creating the Future. She has also run two other campaigns on StartSomeGood.

Kassy (our Grants and Nonprofit Info Center Librarian) and I are also working to create a chart of about 40+ online funding tools and low-cost money transfer services. We're finding an enormous variety, but we're also troubled by the lack of information that would help one asses the reliability of the companies behind these fundraising platforms.

Here is the list we're working from:
Balanced
Bidding for Good
Bolstr
Catapult
Causes
Chip In
CircleUp
COfundOS
Community Funded
Crowd Tilt
Crowdfunder
Crowdrise
EarlyShares
Fans Next Door
Firstgiving
Funding Garage
Fundly
Fundraise
FundRazr
Gambitious
Give Forward
Go Fund Me
Green Unite
HealthTechHatch
Indiegogo
IOBY
Kickstarter
Kiva
Lucky Ant
MedStartr
Microgiving
Microplace
OpenIDEO
Petridish
Razoo
Rock the Post
RocketHub
Simply Raise
Small Knot
Social Campaigns
Sparked
Start Some Good
Stripe
USA Artists
WePay