McCabe Callahan owned a coffee shop in Fort Collins, Colo., when he had the idea for a web-based community fundraising business. His friend, Blue Hovatter, had the same idea. Callahan said he was calling Hovatter to discuss the idea ñ at the same time Hovatter was sending him an email to do the same.Their idea came to fruition under the name Community Funded LLC.Callahan said the idea behind CF is simple: allow the community to donate funds online to whatever project they choose. ìCrowd-funding is the idea of communities of people coming together to share and focus ideas on one project,î Callahan said. ìItís similar to campaigning, in that people make small contributions.îIn April 2012, President Obama signed The Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, making it legal for entrepreneurs to raise up to $1 million for a startup company through crowd-funding.Callahan incorporated the same idea. Community Funding acts as a gateway for businesses and projects that want to promote their activities.Officially formed in November 2011, CF manages a website, CommunityFunded.com, where people can view ongoing projects, Callahan said. From there, people can invest directly in a project through a donation or make a pledge to purchase certain items, he said. The pledges are referred to as giftbacks ñ items often donated by supporters of the project, Callahan said.ìGiftbacks is where we go beyond crowd-funding. Itís the consumer approach,î Callahan said. ìYou can shop for something on the website; and, as you buy it, it tells you what project youíre supporting by buying that. So people can buy things and support a project at the same time.îScott Dawson of Fort Collins participated under CommunityFunded.com, with a project called Treatment for Andrew. He raised money to help his son Andrew receive expensive treatments to combat a series of ìhead bumpsî following hundreds of Myoclonic seizures his son has suffered since he was 18 months old. Dawson said many people offered their support by providing items for sale for the giftbacks program.ìWe made a plea to our friends for giftbacks and we got a very rich response, from cookbooks to a lawnmower to my sister-in-law offering to make custom artistic prints of Andrew,î Dawson said. ìIt made our project much more doable to be able to give something back to the person donating, instead of just walking around asking for $10 from everyone.îProjects like Dawsonís fall under the category ìNeighbor in Needî on the CF website. Other categories include ìStandardî and ìNon-profit.î Projects are thoroughly researched by Callahan and his business partners before they are posted and go live on CommunityFunded.com.ìWe have at least two of the four different partners looking at each project before it goes live,î Callahan said. ìItís a fully open community site but itís essential to us to make sure people know what theyíre involved in. Itís preparing people to know what could happen, not just what might happen. Specifically, on the Neighbor in Need filter, there is a disclaimer to warn people about giving money without educating themselves.îThe money donated goes directly into an account for the project of choice; it never touches a CF bank account, he said.At the time of the interview, Dawson said they had raised $6,000 in donations, which completely funded two weeks of therapy for Andrew. Dawsonís project is not a long-term solution to his sonís problem, he said. The project addressed their immediate need for funds to help stop Andrewís digression from the seizures. The project ended in September, after a four-month run.Callahan said CF helps in other ways besides funding a project. ìYouíre creating awareness for that topic at the same time,î he said. ìIt promotes your project through the funding, but youíre creating awareness for that issue. You can go talk to your city government and say ëwe have raised this many dollars; we have this many people who support this idea.í Weíre creating groups of people who have a common goal.ìWeíre limited in our resources, but the idea of crowd-funding works on a very viral level on the Internet. You have such large groups of people connected now.îThe website also shows the whereabouts of donors so people can see the far-reaching effects of each project. The CF motto: ìAnything is possible when itís community funded.î
