To be honest, I think that most people outside of silicon valley and the Reddit community haven’t heard of Crowdtilt. They did make headlines when the Jamaican Bobsled Team raised , including $30,000 in donations from 1,600 members of the Dogecoin community. In addition, their “crowdtitlt open” platform has gotten great press as one of the ways to self-host a crowdfunding campaign. Just check out these ten campaigns that have raised upwards of 2MM on the platform.
Although they are less well-known, this platform raised $23 million in venture funding in December of 2013. Clearly, they have some big plans and believe they can change the way people “pool funds for group experiences, purchases, and causes!” Check out my review of their platform below. Also be sure to check out my comparison of Crowdtilt, Indiegogo, and Kickstarter.
Fees
With a 2.5% platform fee, Crowdtilt has one of the lowest platform fees in the industry. Kickstarter take a 5% fee and Indiegogo takes a 4% fee for all-or-nothing projects (assuming you hit your goal). However, if you’re going to do a charity fundraising campaign, YouCaring is still the cheapest, with 0% platform fees.
Who uses Crowdtilt?
Unlike Kickstarter, Crowdtilt is more open towards non-profit, charity, and cause-related crowdfunding campaigns.
The website also provides tax-deductible receipts for donors. “Non-Profits keep 97.5% of the funds raised through Crowdtilt. And successful campaigns raise over 188% (almost 2x!) of their target.”
Crowdtilt also has an approachable mobile app, which allows users to create a campaign on the fly and easily pool money from their friends for small projects like “public works projects, renting a party bus, or getting paid back for a group dinner.”
Finally, Crowdtilt recently launched a presale and crowdfunding tool called “Sell Something.” This tool is describe as the “easiest and most convenient way to sell anything to your community! This feature gives you the ability to tilt a campaign by number of people or number of items sold (not just by dollar amount!). Essentially, it makes it easier to sell something on Crowdtilt, without any risk to your buyers.” It will be interesting to see how this new tool performs in the coming months.
Unfortunately, you can only take advantage of all this functionality if you have a valid US or Canadian bank account. However, you can contribute to campaigns as long as you have an international credit card.
To get an idea of who uses Crowdtilt, check out some of the recent projects below.
Crowdfunding Fundraisers
Crowdfunding Experiences
Crowdfunding Purchases of Goods/Supplies
Where does Crowdtilt Fit In?
I think the Crowdtilt mobile app, their lower platform fee, and the Crowdtilt Open platform set the website aside in an increasingly competitive crowdfunding landscape. I still think the go-to websites for rewards-based crowdfunding are Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but I could see more people using Crowdtilt for fundraisers, for very small goals (pooling money for a BBQ), or for self-hosing a crowdfunding campaign.
We’ve already examined the powerful combination of Reddit and Kickstarter. Seeing as Alex Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit and also an investor in Crowdtilt, it will be interesting to see how the platform engages the Reddit community as time goes on.
What do you think?
Have you used Crowdtilt? What do you think of their platform?
