The Reading Rainbow "debacle"

[artistflop]

Okay, Internet, I have a thing to say. Buckle up.

Three days ago, a Kickstarter was launched aiming to reboot Reading Rainbow as a web app for classrooms and families. The aim was to build on the exisiting iPad app, enlarge the online ebook library, and make it available to classrooms for a subscription fee, while at the same time making it

Comments

Great points

[ali_kira]

When the Reading Rainbow campaign went viral I was sitting in a conference watching academics talk about arts and humanities topics, and watching the traffic it brought to Kickstarter was nothing less than inspiring to me: I loved Reading Rainbow as a child, and feel very strongly about making these tools available to children/classrooms/parents etc. who want them. When I got home from the conference I did indeed watch the Kickstarter video and all the updates available by that point, ready every word on the Kickstarter site, and bawled my eyes out because it felt like a great initiative. Yes I backed the project (as an avid Kickstarter user, I back many projects), and even stopped backing another project that I was less enthused about to back this one.

That said, I understand that there is going to be backlash against this campaign (like many Kickstarters) because people don't bother to do their due diligence to find out what it's all about. In fact many folks don't even understand what Kickstarter is all about -- you CAN'T do charitable projects (as in registered charities) on Kickstarter (on indiegogo you can, but Kickstarter is NOT the forum for this because of their stricter rules)! In fact many projects have gotten in trouble for trying to do this in the ways that contravene Kickstarter's rules.

Some people say that organizations with bigger or even celebrity backers shouldn't use crowdfunding to support their projects, but I disagree: not only do projects such as the Veronica Mars Movie and the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter result in a greater number of folks supporting ALL (including the small) crowdfunding campaigns, but often these organizations have indeed exhausted other funding model methods or simply do not know where their support lies.

I definitely see the irony in your observations. As someone who has backed MANY (perhaps too many?) crowdfunding campaigns, I am happy to read your musings on this topic!