Why do we need Grassfunder?

Crowdfunding has revolutionized the creative arts industries, raising millions of dollars per year for creators and their works while providing thousands of books for readers and a much needed source of income for creators, and helping to shepherd many award-winning books (including our own “Mine!”). Clearly, crowdfunding has become a major part of the comics, gaming, and publishing industry. However, there are now serious problems with the leading crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter. We have noted their unfriendly stance towards employee unions previously, and had hoped that they would change their ways. However, new reporting has shown that our hopes have so far been in vain, and that Kickstarter does not intend to live up to their values as a public benefit corporation with regards to their own employees. As a result, a tremendous backlash has started against Kickstarter, with numerous project creators, project backers, cheerleaders and evangelists for the service boycotting the platform or abandoning it entirely. This will turn into a vicious downward spiral, reducing the number of projects as well as the audience, which in turn means fewer projects will be backed to completion. While we respect that the unofficial Kickstarter union has not called for a boycott, we can no longer tie our own business plans to Kickstarter’s dwindling platform. And we aren’t the only ones. We have started Grassfunder.com as a viable alternative to Kickstarter in the hope that that company will do the right thing by its people in the near future. Unless and until that happens, we at Grassfunder will continue to give the Creative Community the crowdfunding ability it needs and deserves.