It appears that more and more conventions lately have been trying to get off the ground using Kickstarter or the less famous IndieGogo to raise funds to start their conventions. And more and more are not getting anywhere, because what Kickstarter and IndieGogo are very good at is in hiding their failed attempts and spotlighting successful projects.
According to the Verge, fewer than 1 in 10 IndieGogo projects are fully funded. And according to the Kickstarter's
stats page, there have been 159,919 launched projects, and 65,502 successfully funded projects. KickStarter's higher ratio is likely because KickStarter appears to have tougher initial launch screening requirements.
Here are a few convention projects going on right now... some of which may be in hot water (3% after 7 days, and a little over 1% after 2 days...).
ValorCon's lofty goal of $120,000 is an impressive number for starting a first year convention, but they're using Kickstarter rather than IndieGogo - so the convention won't even happen unless they raise the entirety of that $120,000 goal. That can give people a lot more incentive to select large hotel+admission packages, because they don't have to worry about buying tickets to a convention that never happens.
Here are a
few more failing or
failed convention kickstarters:
And here are the
successful convention kickstarters:
I wish some of these hosts luck, as
conventions are some of the best places to make friends and meet people, but sometimes when planning you need to start on a smaller budget. And, to clarify, that means find a cheaper hotel. If you try to start a first year convention at a hotel that costs more than $20,000 - you're going to have a bad time.