We’ve seen the power of crowdfunding firsthand with the success of the popular platform Kickstarter. Less than a week ago, two projects hit the $1M funding mark, proving to the world that if you can get enough people interested in a project, you can fund it organically.
You can find projects on Kickstarter for apps, games, documentaries, and consumer products, but there’s no dedicated area for backing projects that are “green” in nature, meaning that they’re meant to help make our planet a better place.
GreenUnite has launched today to handle that niche and it hopes that it can become a platform for anyone with great ideas and eco-friendly projects to get funding and make them a reality. You won’t find any fancy new iPad cases on this site, but you will find wearable recyclables.
Back a project, save the Earth
Just like you’ll find on Kickstarter, anyone can submit a project to GreenUnite. The process is simple and your project must fit one of the green categories that the site provides. Another wrinkle in the submission process is that your project must benefit a charitable cause or non-profit in some way.
The project pages are also similar to Kickstarter, allowing the project owners to embed a video to help collect “seeders” for their project. Project prizes can be awarded for different levels of support and the idea is to create a strong community of entrepreneurial minds and supporters all wanting to do things that benefit the planet:
While Kickstarter’s main draw is that you could actually be one of the first to receive the product that you back, GreenUnite could build a community focused on doing good. If there are products and prizes involved, they should definitely take a back seat to the greater social good the site is creating.
In addition to supporting projects on the GreenUnite platform, you can tweet and post your favorite project to Facebook or embed something like this on your site to make sure that you get the word out about it:
With the crowdfunding concept and space on fire, it’s nice to see a project like this stepping up to do some actual good for our planet. The site also provides some really great resources about clean technology, global warming, and organic gardening in case you’d like to educate yourself before putting down your hard-earned cash.
Want to write a book? There’s a Kickstarter for that too, it’s called Unbound.
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