We have touched quite a fair bit about crowdfunding on Vulcan Post. In Singapore, we are definitely familiar with the concept, where anyone can easily create an online campaign featuring what project they are working on, and raise money from people globally through crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter.
Kickstarter, the world’s leading crowdfunding platform revealed in March that there are more than 5 million people who have funded more than 50,000 creative projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, and food-related projects on its platform. Of the funding support, it was also revealed that Singapore is among the top 10 countries to be supporting Kickstarter campaigns, showing that the concept is not uncommon to Singaporean. Recently too, one of the country’s main telco StarHub, has also launched a new dedicated crowdfunding site to bring more ideas to life.
Other than crowdfunding films, gadgets or even watches, recently a Singaporean blogger has also turned to crowdfunding to raise funding for his court case. You might have heard of it: Roy Ngerng, whom was sued by the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, is raising a total of S$70,000 to fund his court case.
As of the time of the writing, Roy has raised a total of S$36,606.05 so far.
It was not too long ago when Singapore youths had to constantly fend off the label of being apathetic. However, there are more people who are turning in to give monetary support to Roy through crowdfunding.
Of course, while there are people who are not too happy with what Roy did, and cautioned against supporting the wrong cause through funding Roy’s legal fee, it is undeniable that we are increasingly getting more familiar and start to embrace crowdfunding as a means to garner support to do what we think is right.