Awesome Stuff: Crowdfund Our Way To Reducing The Influence Of Money In Politics

from the a-different-sort-of-crowdfunding-campaign dept

Okay, so each week for our awesome stuff post about crowdfunding projects, we look at a variety of interesting projects for weird, funky, innovative and interesting products that are being offered on platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. This week is going to be a bit different. We're just going to point people to a single project: Larry Lessig's MAYDAY.US. And, yes, we already wrote about this at the beginning of May when the first phase launched, and again when it hit the $1 million goal -- and then secured the second million in matching funds. However, the project has now moved into phase two, where the goal is to raise (and match) $5 million, instead of just $1 million. Already it's around half a million dollars, so there's a long way to go, but it's a good start. And, once again, the goal here is to raise this total of $12 million ($1 million + $1 million match in May, and then $5 million + $5 million match in June) as a test for a much larger effort. I've seen too many overly cynical folks say "$12 million isn't enough to change politics." And you're right. But that's not the goal. This is $12 million to be used in specific races as a proof of concept for a much larger moonshot. But to make that happen, this campaign needs to get to $5 million by the end of June. If that happens, it will truly fit into the category of "awesome stuff."

Filed Under: awesome stuff, crowdfunding, larry lessig, mayday, mayday citizens superpac, mayone, money in politics

Lessig's Anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC Raises First $1 Million In Just 12 Days

from the off-to-a-great-start dept

We're a little late on this (past few days have been quite busy...) but Larry Lessig's SuperPAC to end all SuperPACs has hit its first target way early. As you hopefully remember, the goal was to reach $1 million in 30 days, which would then be matched by an (as yet) unknown donor, followed by a second campaign to raise $5 million in June -- again matched by a donor. The plan then would be to use the $12 million to work on a few specific Congressional races to prove that it can have an impact, and then kick off in 2015 with a much bigger campaign to have an even larger impact. There's still a long way to go, but this seems like a great start: Hopefully Lessig and the organization he's putting together will release some more data as well. $85 average is good to see, though I'd love to see more information on the breakdown of donations, including some sense of the distribution and median donations as well.

Filed Under: larry lessig, mayday citizens superpac, mayone, superpacs