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The Morning Briefing: Crowdfunding and causes

By | November 9, 2012, 12:50 AM PST

“The Morning Briefing” is SmartPlanet’s daily roundup of must-reads from the web. This morning we’re reading about how crowdfunding can help promote causes.

1.) Crowdfunding citizen journalism in Cairo. Mosireen, a media collective in downtown Cairo that offers equipment and training to citizen journalists, was born out of the effort by activists to document the Egyptian revolution online.

2.) Crowdfunding helping California churches go solar. Churches in the United States are non-profit. Therefore, they aren’t eligible for investment tax credits (no federal funding is available to them), and this complicates the process of funding solar panels on their properties. So, some California churches have decided to use an unusual approach, crowdfunding.

3.) Is crowdfunding the documentary industry’s cure for austerity? Crowdfunding can be a sustainable third way between dependence on public funding and corporate funding.

4.) Crowdfunding helps non-starters and re-livers ride again. Crowdfunding is not just for newcomers — blasts from the past can also get a second life by leveraging the same kinds of direct-funding mechanisms.

5.) Can crowd funding replace a bank mortgage? Frustrated with the banks, a young couple is taking a novel approach to raising money: Recruiting donors via the web, promising to repay the ‘loan’ by giving to earmarked charities.

Image credit: Jonny White

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Charlie Osborne

About Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne

Contributing Editor

Charlie Osborne is a freelance journalist and graphic designer based in London. In addition to SmartPlanet, she also writes the iGeneration column for business technology website ZDNet. She holds degrees in medical anthropology from the University of Kent.

Follow her on Twitter.

Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne

Charlie Osborne does not have financial holdings that would influence how or what she covers.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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Capitalism isn't working?
That banner is more worthy of getting comments than the scope of the article.

Capitalism isn't working, because, socialism is destroying it. Socialism is self-destructive, and when people want bigger government and get it, socialism tends to overpower the free-spirit of the free-market/capitalism. Both cannot exist together. Socialism is destructive, and capitalism is not the problem. The problem is that, "when the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic", which is another way of saying that, the republic will die as a consequence of the people killing the free-market system.
Posted by adornoe
9th Nov
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Why Does it Have to Be Either Or?
Haven't we seen that extremism on any topic is not only irrational, but destined to fail. Capitalism and socialism and communism are all inventions of people who think they can create a better world. There are some aspects of each that have merit and others, that if exaggerated are destructive. Look at what treating corporations like people have done to our struggling democracy. Look what communism did to the Soviet Union. We need a balance of isms that work for the majority to live their dreams and be a productive member of society.
Posted by quonexus
23rd Nov
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