http://www.kickstarter.com/. Thousand dollars invested in works of art, videos, book publising. Millions- in games, major movies. Thousands of small investors, expecting virtually nothing as a payback.
This is crowdfunding.

The concept is easy and clear- persons announces the idea, presents it on the webpage. After that, people decide, whether to give money to this project. Sure, each projects has “perks”, that encourage donator to choose “this our very special something”.

The most interesting fact is that neither of these contributors receives any profit from such investment. Just thousand of people helping each other.

How does crowdfund works? Company (Kickstarters) simply takes around 10% from each donation.

This is a wonderful business model, where the costs are low (as it is, company only provides a platform for exhibiting projects), and profits are high- some projects add up to several million dollars in donations, making it around 100 000 profit for the company for 1 project. And there are few dozen fundraisers running on the website at a time.

Fundraising, as appears, may become a base for profitable and ethical business, as it helps people to achieve their goals and dreams (creates positive values) and receives profit for it (does what business is there for).