Warbird Funding

[deskpro590]

I wonder if more museums/organizations will use crowd sourcing (Kickstarter/GoFundMe) in conjunction with Social media to get warbird projects going. The one the CAF did for 'That's All Brother' seemed to work really well. Ride programs and museum fees along with memberships keep the lights on, but this seems like another avenue that would be beneficial...

[JohnTerrell]

The Mid Atlantic Air Musem also used Kickstarter in order to fund the materials for the restoration/rebuild of the outer wing sections for their P-61 (which the donations exceeded their goal), and there is currently a fund raiser through IndieGoGo in order to help finance the Military Aviation Museum's Mosquito visit to Oshkosh this summer (with some very nice 'rewards' for different donation levels): https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/help ... 015#/story

[Nathan]

they already do that.

[ProudKerman]

http://www.pozible.com/project/195714

[Brenden S]

Mustang is only $1426 away from the goal. That is not too much to ask from everyone.

[deskpro590]

Pitched in. Will be a nice Mustang! Would be cool to have a single place to go, kinda like a listing of projects in need of funds I guess....

[Ewan]

Pitched in. Will be a nice Mustang! Would be cool to have a single place to go, kinda like a listing of projects in need of funds I guess....

Good idea! It's still a fairly recent thing but if you go to the sites - main ones are Kickstarter, gofundme, Pozible, indiegogo etc and just type in aircraft in the search engine you should be able to find the projects.

One of the key things is to be realistic with the targets. I had to think about this when I set up the Beuafort and Mustang projects. I could have asked for the full amounts to raise (250k for Mustang) but the chances of doing that are greatly reduced. The Spitfire project in the UK on Kickstarter has a target of 3 million . When we did the Beaufort it was to restore the stern frame only so makes it easier to break project into smaller more attainable chunks - the biggest issue being that if you don't get your target you set you get no funds that have been pledged. That's why I'm always encouraging and reminding people to pledge otherwise the hard work comes to zip

Sometimes you may be lucky and it goes the other way and overfunded - that's a bonus - but make sure you are seen above the loads of other projects. If only we could do something like the potato salad guy on Kickstarter - started a campaign to get the funds $5 or so to make some potato salad and ended up with over $50,000.....

Hope this sheds a little more light on things
Cheers

[flightsimer]

biggest issue being that if you don't get your target you set you get no funds that have been pledged. That's why I'm always encouraging and reminding people to pledge otherwise the hard work comes to zip
Cheers

Kickstarter was my least favorite site because of the reach goal or no money aspect. Indiegogo let's you keep the money you raise even if you do not reach the goal but they will take a larger percentage than if you had reached your goal.

It can go both ways, with our fundraiser for our C-47, we really were not supported at all with using crowd funding. That has forced us to extend what should have been a fairly simple restoration that should have taken just a year or so to complete now to a 2-3 year project as we are trying to pay for everything out of pocket and things that we could have contracted out for we are now doing in house with our limited volunteers.

We still have some big expense items that need to be completed, so hopefully we will be able to finish those this year so we can be flying next...

[Zac Yates]

Crowdfunding sites are such an amazing thing for enthusiasts like me who can't physically get to projects to help out. Thanks to the various sites I've been able to donate to the Australian static Beaufort and Mustang projects, Mosquito KA114's Oshkosh visit, the ex-RAAF Liberator restoration, Avro Shackleton WR963 and others. It's excellent to have a way to help out projects you like and in some cases get cool rewards (shirts, pins, patches). I can only see use of these sites increasing, and thanks to Facebook and Twitter one can share that they've donated and - hopefully - inspire others to get involved.