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His Ideas 23 ~ Crowdfunding

March 3, 2021

He happened to watch a TV program that featured 'crowdfunding' under the situation of the coronavirus pandemic. The program said that crowdfunding in this country had gathered more money during the coronavirus pandemic last year than the previous years. A crowdfunding management company, for example, which had started their business 10 years before, contracted 8 one million plus dollar projects last year. Until then, they had only one such contract. They contracted more than 16,000 projects last year. Crowdfunding management companies have an important role to connect two segments: a project planner to its supporters. He had simply thought that crowdfunding meant creating a fundraiser to gather money in small amounts from a lot of people for a venture project or company. But the program explained that there are a lot of various types of crowdfunding, like 'Donation type', 'Purchase type', etc.   They introduced two examples of 'Purchase type'. A traditional maker of wooden square sake cups called 'masu' had a hard time because 'masu', which is a lucky symbol, is used mainly at wedding parties and festive events, and both events were heavily refrained from in the past year. The company sought crowdfunding to survive, the management company gathered supporters from their website, supporters paid money to keep the traditional industry alive while receiving special 'masu' in return. The management company itself withdrew a 10-20 percent commission from the project. The other example was a small restaurant that sold bags of their original curry powder. The package was illustrated by a designer who also had a hard time with lack of work. Thanks to crowdfunding, their products started to sell well, and was connected to a souvenir shop and a company cafeteria that was the effect of SNS from supporters who were spreading news of it. Another type was 'Donation type'. A NPO which had been supporting homeless people for more than 30 years asked for crowdfunding for the first time. It gathered enough money to prepare to rent 150 apartment rooms for homeless people to live in. The NPO representative said in an interview that he felt a big change in society with crowdfunding under the coronavirus situation. Two supporters were also interviewed for the TV show. One person who worked at an unstable job and her salary wasn't good, but even so, she felt sympathy for people in need. The other anonymous person donated money to about two hundred projects! He felt happiness to support such enjoyable projects.   A guest on the TV show explained that management companies, as a third party, fill an important role not only matching ideas with money, but also make it transparent for the public about the projects, for example, how to pay, the number of current supporters, and the amount of money already raised, etc. This type of crowdfunding could be another method for creation of social businesses other than subsidies from the government and loans from banks. The program also mentioned about a negative aspect of crowdfunding. Crowdfunding is easy to be used as fraud: for example, a person who donated $100 is not likely to sue a company if the project didn't proceed as it was announced. The guest said that screening for initial projects, improvement of each plan with its planners, and the transparency of the process by the management companies are important. His Idea #23 : Crowdfunding He hoped that this type of crowdfunding would become prosperous, which would encourage people who were willing to take risks to change society for the better and to those who were willing to support them.

No.423



*feature : 特集する
*raise : 資金を集める
*contract : 契約する
*refrain : 控える
*seek : 探す
*anonymous : 匿名の
*subsidy : 補助金
*fraud : 詐欺
*screen : 選別する
*initial : 最初の
*prosperous : 成功する、繁栄する