Crowdfunding a new cornucopia of funds for development

Let's draw a picture in our mind. Imagine a little girl, Hasna, running carefree in the midst of the green beauty of a village, playing 'bouchi' and 'kanamachhi' with her friends, going to school with everlasting zeal and helping her mom in her daily chores. What could be the worst thing cursing this little girl's life? Yes, getting married off to a 15 or 20 years older guy at a very young age. Sad but true; this is excruciating story of thousands of Hasnas all around us! To create awareness against child marriage in Bangladesh and to contribute to the education of the female children of the society, ParrotInMotion Studio brings this heart touching story of the little girl Hasna and her struggle to the audience through animated storyboard and screenplay. And what should be the way to create the awareness? Yes, Crowdfunding it is. Hasna is an upcoming graphic novel and animated short film project about preventing child marriage and a girl child's social rights.
Gala dinners and events have been well-known and effective ideas so far to raise funds for various causes. But if we talk about the next big idea of raising funds in this era of global connectivity we must enlighten us about 'Crowdfunding.' Crowd-funding is the collective effort of individuals who network and pool their money, usually via the Internet, to support efforts initiated by other people or organisations. Crowd-funding, throughout the world, is used in support of a wide variety of activities, including disaster relief, support of artists by fans, political campaigns, startup company funding, motion picture promotion, free software development and so on. If we look into some of the examples globally, we will get to know how extensively crowd-funding has been utilised for creative ventures. It all started back in 1884, when the American Committee for the Statue of Liberty ran out of funds for the Statue's pedestal. Joseph Pulitzer urged the American public to donate money for the fund of the pedestal through his newspaper New York World and thus it raised over $100,000 in six months.
In this first ever crowd funding endeavor, more than 125,000 people contributed to the cause with most donations being $1 or less. The ongoing Space combat video game Star Citizen, from Chris Roberts, is by far the largest crowd-funded project ever and the highest crowd-funded amount for a video game raising $2,134,374 on kickstarter. The Ubuntu Edge was a proposed high concept smartphone announced by Canonical Ltd. on 22 July 2013. It had the highest target of any crowdfunded project to date, $32,000,000 over a one-month campaign. Furthermore, American neo-noir mystery comedy-drama film, Veronica Mars, a continuing film adaptation based on Thomas' UPN/CW television series of the same name, co-written, produced and directed by Rob Thomas and co-written with Diane Ruggiero, raised almost 6 billion dollars as a kickstarter through crowd-funding.
 Sometimes "Crowdfunding" might just be the tool for certain causes such as creating awareness. In the case of the upcoming graphic novel and animated short film 'Hasna' by ParrotInMotion Studio the story has strong gender relevance and a powerful social commentary. The CEO of ParrotInMotion Studio Gaushey Shahriar believes that the deployment of animation enables the story to reach to a mass audience globally and inform people through entertainment. Gaushey is the Director of this first Bangladeshi crowd funded animated film 'Hasna' and he is running this project along with two other animated films Captain Bangladesh and The Dream from his studio.
Crowd funding, which is an activation to raise funds from the crowd via internet is a very new concept in Bangladesh. That is why it is more challenging and exciting at the same time.
For successful crowdfunding the first strategy is to get connected with reliable personalities. ParrotInMotion Studio's Project 'Hasna' can be an example where credible personality like Haider Rizvi, a Polish NRB film director and former assistant to Roman Polanski, has been involved as advisor. Secondly, the strategies to connect the "crowd" through activities like support from media, active social media interactions through the facebook or even signing for a pledge of oath. This can also be extended through honoring the contributors with badge and token of gratitude or in activation campaigns etc. Another big issue is the payment process. "Since the general public of Bangladesh is not yet regularly used to transactions online or do not have online payment interface, they assume that the payment procedure is complex. Therefore, they feel reluctant to pay via a simple bKash transaction though they have full support and intention to pay. In such case, the key is to interact with the potential contributors on regular basis and explain to them that the procedure is not complex. With proper utilization of social media and regular follow ups, this obstacle can be overcome," as Gaushey suggested from his experience of the ongoing crowdfunding project 'Hasna'. Besides, due to recent political turmoil of the country, direct interaction with people and activations of the project are being hampered. The ATM booths do not have adequate money, people feel reluctant to go to the retail shop and do a bKash transaction in such situations, and all these eventually result in delay of fund collection. Finally the crowdfunding project needs to have a platform to collect the funds. To facilitate this process, ParrotInMotion has formed the website 'muktotohobil.com' which has been launched as the first dedicated crowd-funding website of Bangladesh. At 'muktotohobil.com', one can submit their creative ideas and get the chance to raise funds from the general mass. Anyone who finds the work interesting can go to the website, click on the 'support' button and pledge a certain amount for the creative ideas. This particular concept of crowdfunding is comparatively new in Bangladesh but is a very popular form of financing in the Western and the European world.
Crowdfunding is definitely going to be the next generation of fundraising and creative expression for those who are unheard. "Muktotohobil.com", the online platform for crowdfunding , has already started to support and facilitate this idea. This ultimately assists any good cause to bring in a positive socio economic impact in Bangladesh. Platform such as this aims at promoting youngsters of the upcoming days and the new generation entrepreneurs with great ideas through crowdfunding. Most importantly, the online crowd funding will generate significant attention to familiarize with crowdfunding in Bangladesh. And hopefully, in near future, crowdfunding may become one of the most effective tools to raise funds for development of Bangladesh.
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