Is there anything like Kickstarter for non artistic ventures?

Factual Questions
1

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.)

2

Donors Choose, perhaps?

3

Kickstarter dot com has a “Games” section, and a “Technology” section.

4

Since it’s school related that might work. I’ll give it a look. Thanks!

5

You might also take a look at Indiegogo or Go Fund Me. I just did a search; turns out there are WAY more of these crowdfunding sites than I ever imagined.

I’m thinking of using one of these for my own project. Kickstarter has been getting a lot of press lately; there was even a panel about it at TCAF this past weekend. But Kickstarter is limited to people with a “US presence” because they use Amazon Payments for their payment processor.

6

Thanks Sunspace- those look good.

7

Donors Choose is really your best bet - it’s a non-profit, so all donated funds are tax deductible, whereas they are not on Kickstarter. You’ll need to have school administration set it up though - but frankly, if they don’t currently have anything set up on Donors Choose already, they need to get their ass in gear and do so, they’re missing out on an incredible fundraising tool.