After CCP put an end to gambling, many community projects – streamers, news sites and a variety of labours of love – need funding as they readjust to the reality of pockets being rather shallow. They need to find new sources of income, bootstrap their operations, align with an entity, or ask the people they benefit to pay something towards their work. The last option has now become a reality, on a larger scale than individual donation requests or patreon buttons.
Tournament organizer EVE-NT have unveiled ISKStarter. On the website isk-starter.com, people can create campaigns and people can pledge money (by donating it to the namesake corp). Within the first hours after unveiling the site, 2.5 bn have already been donated to campaigns, mostly those to finance EVE-NT and our colleagues over at Crossing Zebras. But other campaigns seeking funding, too: At the time of writing Best of Us( a support network for military veterans), RvB (a highsec PvP corp; for a tournament), Bomber’s Bar (a cloaky NPSI entity) and the New Eden Accounting Tool (an asset managing app) are all vying for your support. Since many of the current campaigns are intended to be monthly endeavors, I will be curious to see whether ISKStarter will introduce a Patreon-like functionality, where you would pledge monthly contributions.
Nonetheless, the idea is out there. Will people put their money where their mouth is? If you want, head on over to isk-starter.com and support those communities and sites dear to you.
