For those not familiar, Kickstarter is a website where if you’re trying to raise money for a movie, or a music video, or a CD, pretty much anything artistic/related to show biz people can contribute. One of the most popular things about it is that if you need to raise, say, $25,000, it does not charge anybody’s credit card/bank account until it gets there, so if you only raise $9,522 by the deadline nobody is charged anything. It is not required to be for a non-profit endeavor and, to my knowledge, usually isn’t.
So, a friend of mine has a kid who’s trying to raise money to start a canoeing/kayaking team at her school. They need around $6,000 to buy the gear (don’t know if that includes the kayak) and pay for expenses and insurance that the school requires. Is there anything like kickstarter (i.e. would allow people to contribute $1 up to however much they want to, would process the billing for them [minus whatever their cut is], but nobody is charged anything if they don’t reach the goal they set) that could be used for this type of fundraising?
(Since it’s a far from essential expense and I don’t know if it’s officially school sanctioned I have no idea whether donations could qualify for tax deductible status but let’s simplify by saying that they are NOT. This is basically like putting change in a jar in a store or giving money to a homeless person: no write-off.)