With over 120 successful projects and half a million pledged, PledgeMe has been in the media a lot lately! Here’s a bit of a round up on the past few weeks:

Tattletale Saints have been on the radio and TV talking about their plans to head to Nashville – our favourite interview was their chat with Jim Mora of National radio (who pledged, and “formally secured his position in [Tattletale Saints] hearts as coolest dude ever.”)

Songs for Christchurch got a shout out in Dom Post and the Press too.

The Neonatal Trust got on the Breakfast show to talk about their ambitious plans to break the world record for most sandcastles built in an hour. They also sent out this press release: http://www.voxy.co.nz/national/adventure-wellington-launch-golden-bucket-comp/5/136823

Freda talked about the inspiration behind Kiwi Diary on Access Radio this week, and also talked about her experience crowdfunding to date. Jez Brown has also been a recent interviewee on Access Radio to discuss his double header success crowdfunding for the New Zealand Ice Hockey League. Next up? Ben from the North Feature Film team – tune in on Monday, 15 October at 5:15pm to 783AM.

The Pink Ribbon Calendar Girls launched their calendar last week – with a fantastic night with all their calendar girls, models artist and team and all the wonderful people who have got behind the project – it really was incredible.

“Everyone was just buzzing and the life size calendar images they had around the room were a hit.  Over 200 people turn up!
The event’s success was largely due to their Event Organiser Lisa Hill from Beautiful Events for making Bayleys look stunning and for pulling all sorts of suppliers together to donate supplies/equipment etc for the event and Chef Glen Rockhouse who got all his contacts in the hospitality industry to donate ingredients for the canapes. Now roll on calendar sales!”

New Zealand Music Commission released their video interview with Anna from a few months ago.

We hit Half a Million – and did a wee press release about it.

Critic, my favourite student mag ever [I'm biased as an Otago girl], did a bit of a piece on us as well. I think it was their attempt to throw down the guantlet in Dunedin, and I can’t wait to see what comes of it!

Gather and Hunt also did a bit of a piece on crowdfunding in Auckland, which we think proves our point that a local flavour to crowdfunding is important.

Things have been a bit non stop in the PledgeMe office with a wave of project successes – and our projects have been getting more media attention than you can shake a stick at! Here’s a bit of a round up:

Janelle Murphy’s doco on her great grandmother Dame Whina Cooper has been getting interest (and pledges) all over the world. Here’s a write up on her project on the Tangata Whenua website. She was also covered in the East and Bays Courier where she explained more about her motivation for starting the documentary.

The team behind the Pink Ribbon Calendar are pretty inspiring. Not only are they all passionate about raising awareness of breast cancer, but quite a few of them are cancer survivors themselves. They managed to reach their goal of $10,000 (with 20 minutes to spare!) and had whole contingent of twitter supporters and media interest. Here’s some of the coverage they received, as well as a shout out in Stuff.

The PledgeMe project to support Taame and Rangi’s appeal caused a bit of controversy on PledgeMe, but it also shook out a hugely supportive backing of artists and their fans. Here’s a bit more about the team behind it as reported in the Manawatu Standard.

The Hawkes Bay have a new community led initiative called Gay Ok, whose mission is to support the young LGBT community. Lloyd Mason started the PledgeMe campaign and has a  real vision for the group, which he talked about with Gay NZ here.

The Capital Times are right – you do have the whole world in your PledgeMe! We were stoked to get a shout out in their newspaper and on their website. Check out some more stats backing up that statement here.

We were also super stoked to get a shout out from Grow Wellington, who have supported us with some good old solid advice over the past year. They wrote a case study on PledgeMe and sent it out to their networks. Good stuff.

There’s also been a bit of mainstream media on crowdfunding in New Zealand with the Sunday Star Times and Unlimited jumping into the fray. Anna was pretty stoked with her very own pull quote!

Well, you know some pretty cool things are afoot when the projects you’re working with start getting talked about in the media left, right and centre. Here are a few of the highlights from the past week:

Tama Waipara, the powerhouse, has already made it halfway to his goal, and he’s been up for a week! He got a shout out in Volume – check it out here. He’s also doing a daily blog about his crowdfunding, which you potential project creators might like to check out – it totally does take two ears to listen.

Jenah Shaw, from we are immortal, got an awesome mention in my favourite magazine, Frankie. Here’s the link. Congrats Jenah for getting funded last week – I can’t wait to get my reward.

Olly from ComRoid got an article in his local paper, the Taupo Times – with a pretty awesome shot of the creator himself (who is normally more  comfortable behind a camera than in front of it, we think!).

Simeon Gilbert, from Levitation, got showcased on Tech Bytes on 3 News! Check out the clip here. Even though we didn’t quite make it to the funding goal, Simeon put in a momentous effort and raised over $10,000 in pledges. He’s gotten some very serious investment interest from all the emails he sent (over 20,000 people were reached) – and we can’t wait to hear more on the levitation story.

We got name dropped in mainstream New Zealand media today — on our oh so favourite and bookmarked news centre, Stuff. You haven’t seen the article yet? Well have a looksee here.

Crowdfunding is an interesting beast, it’s used all over the world in a variety of different ways. They say Obama was one of the most successful political crowdfunders, with his grassroots campaign in 2008 seeing him raise over 3/4 of a billion dollars mainly  through small transactions from supporters over the internet. Sport has also seen it’s own form of crowdfunding, with Ebbsfleet becoming the first football club to be owned by a crowd of 25,000 fans in 2008 (who each paid 35GBP to purchase their share). Creative projects are definitely the main stay of crowdfunding, with platforms in every country in the world devoted to the support of a cross section of creativity, from film through music and art.

But from an entrepreneurial sense, we still run the gambet of laws governing the sales of securities and even gambling. So, David Rose’s thoughts that this may one day be overcome is heartening. But, in the meantime, PledgeMe will focus on the social, unFMA regulated, side of crowdfunding — with the quasi philanthropic support of creative projects in New Zealand.

Do you have any thoughts on Crowdfunding? Have you seen it at work in New Zealand or overseas, either effectively or not? Leave a comment yo – we’d love to hear your thoughts.