@craigmod

I never imagined community fundraising would be so stressful. I barely slept the first week of Art Space Tokyo's Kickstarter campaign and didn’t realize until halfway through why: doing a Kickstarter project properly is like dancing naked in Times Square with a bucket for change. You have to be confident (or people will just laugh) and you have to love what you’re pitching (or else why the hell would you be naked in public?).

The process can be terrifying. What if nobody else loves it? Or doesn’t love it enough? Or the ultimate fear: what if they just throw money in your bucket out of pity?! You sad, naked man, you.

At first friends and family come. They heard about your fiasco and — God bless ‘em — they’ve come to throw in a couple bucks. Then strangers start to throw money. And not just money, but also shouts of encouragement. “Nice moves!” a kind-faced, obese black woman with a head scarf yells as she walks by eating a hot dog. And you actually think to yourself, “I don’t think she was being sarcastic.”

After a week you start to believe that your goal is reachable, and that your special little naked dance may have something going for it. Media picks up on your gig. You’re on the six o’clock news. And suddenly you need ten buckets and armed police to guard the $10,000 sitting in front of you.

Once you can see with certainty that your goal will to be met, you slip into a deep sleep. When you wake you’re surrounded by an invigorated, engaged community of backers. They care about the progress of your project — and you have a beautiful (if somewhat terrifying) relationship forged out of expectations and obligations born from taking tens of thousands of dollars from strangers.

There are always escape hatches. One could dump, for instance, $10,000 from a credit card cash-advance into the thing if necessary. But to have the project (and philosophies and existence of a market) validated by steadfast pledges from strangers is a thousand times more inspiring than funding it against your means.

It's easy to underestimate the awesomeness of Kickstarter for rallying communities when money is such a flashier indicator of success. But I can say from experience, without the pledges it would have been a long and lonely three months of prepping, editing and printing Art Space Tokyo. Without the pledges you're not just without money, you're without community. And if you're not doing this to build a community, just why the heck, buddy, are you naked in Times Square?