If you have a project you want (crowd)funded, there’s a number of platforms you can use to get the job done. However, if you’re in Latin America, you’re almost 100% sure to end up on Idea.Me, the ‘Kickstarter’ of the region, with a particular focus on creative and social impacting projects!

First of all, what is crowdfunding?

If you aren’t familiar with crowdfunding, it’s exactly what it sounds like: funding through the crowd – your supporters and backers. A creator launches a crowdfunding campaign with a set goal they want to reach and then large groups of people contribute a small sum in order to achieve that goal. The funds raised are then used to turn an idea(.Me) into reality. The crowdfunding trend was started by Kickstarter, the world’s largest crowdfunding platform launched in the US several years ago.

Ok, I get… So why not just use Kickstarter then?

Launched in 2011. in Argentina, Idea.Me focuses on the whole region, not just a particular country like some of its competitors have. One of them, Brazilian Movere, was acquired by Idea.Me in late 2012. It has had hundreds of projects, from all across Latin America, as well as a number of US Hispanic campaigns. It’s currently available in Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay and the US.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOSQ3XUomWY

The US campaigns show why Idea.Me has been so successful. While US-based Kickstarted does have a limit on creators having to be from the US in order to start a crowdfunding project, it’s even more important for Idea.Me to cover the right cultural context of Latin American creators and backers.

Idea.Me has had a far larger cultural and economic impact on the region that you might think at first. As former Idea.Me CEO Pia Giudice told Techcrunch:

With the very limited access to formal capital in Latin America, Idea.me is essential for the development of our countries

So How Has Idea.Me Focused on Latin America?

One key aspect of “localisation” that Idea.Me has adopted is supporting payment options acceptable in the region, such as cash as well as other methods that match the region’s risk aversion.

It was the first crowdfunding platform in the Americas to start supporting Bitcoins, seen as an alternative to credits cards and Paypal. Giudice has said that Idea.Me is using Bitpay to automatically convert Bitcoins into dollars so creators would receive their contributions in USD.

Idea.Me’s website is available in Spanish, Portugese and English with almost all regional currencies available, including Argentine and Mexican Pesos, the Brazilian Real and the US dollar.

The whole spectrum of payment options includes:

• Paypal
• MercadoPago – used for local payments in Argentina, Colombia (credit or cash) and Mexico (cash)
• DineroMail – used for local payments in CHile (credit and debit cards, cash or shopping cards)
• Moip – used for local payments in Brasil (Cash)
• Bitpay – for Bitcoin payments

A Self Funded Community

The other key way Idea.Me is impacting Latin America is actually building a community of backers that want to see Latin American entrepreneurs succeed with funding coming from a region that has fewer formal funding opportunities than its Northern neighbour, especially for non-tech projects that it focuses on.

While funds like 500 Startups have focused more and more on Latin American startups, its the creative and social projects that need Idea.Me the most.

With (Latin American) Focus, Comes Funding Flexibility

If you’ve ever used Kickstarter, you know that projects HAVE TO reach their goal. Since Idea.Me wants projects to have a better chance of succeeding, it actually allows you two types of fund collection:

All or Nothing (Fixed) is the known model where the creator MUST reach 100% of their funding goal before the end of the funding period. If they don’t reach the goal, all the money will be returned to the backers. It’s a way of putting pressure on the community to work toward the goal, but it does – obviously – have a certain risk to it.

Everything helps (Flexible) is a bit different, letting the creator collect the proceeds even if they don’t reach their goal. However, before receiving any funds, the creator needs to submit an alternative plan to Idea.Me on how the collected funds will be used. It’s a way, as Idea.Me points out on their website, of getting creators closer to their goal.

Great, so How Do I Use It?

You can easily create an account on Idea.Me to either create a project or fund it. While funding a project requires one push of a button, creating a new crowdfunding project is a bit more difficult.

It’s not that Idea.Me doesn’t give you a great, easy-to-use editor that will let you upload photos and add text in a couple of minutes, but having the right text and images – is a challenge. So while you explore projects you can fund on Idea.Me, we definitely have to cover how to create the ‘perfect’ project on Idea.Me in the furure! For now, support some of the dozens of existing Idea.Me creators – I know I will!