New Features: 24 Hour Direct Deposit & International Credit Cards

More awesomeness dropping this week @ Crowdtilt - 2 features we’ve added:

1) 24-Hour, Direct Deposits… Yes, 24-hour Next-Day Deposits.

Pooling money online has NEVER EVEN COME CLOSE TO THIS! Until now.

Once your direct deposit is set up, you are guaranteed to get your funds within the next business day (and once your direct deposit is set up, you never have to set it up/configure it again)! This is faster than what any of the major payments platforms currently offer, and it’s ONLY ON CROWDTILT :)

2) International Credit Card Support!!

You can now start a campaign on Crowdtilt and accept contributions from all over the world! Do you have friends in Canada, France, or Japan? Invite them to your campaign and make your community span across the globe. And your friends get to take advantage of our One-Click Easy Payments :) 

Our goal is simple: to help you do more with your group. We hope these two new features are another step in this direction. 

New Features: Follow & Invite Friends

We are excited to announce two REALLY BIG features coming out today!

Introducing Follow Friends


You can now easily see what your friends are doing on Crowdtilt by following people. Once you click on the “follow” button under your friend’s image in the campaign community or on their profile page, we will let you know when he or she starts a new public campaign. New private campaigns will not send these notifications, so you can still safely plan that surprise birthday party!

If you want to see who is following you, as well as who you follow, click on the “Followers” or “Following” links on your profile page.  And just for thrills, we’ll ping you if somebody starts following you. 

Invite your Friends to Crowdtilt

If you want more of your friends to join you on Crowdtilt, you can now effortlessly invite them right from your profile and we’ll do the rest. Send invitations via email, Facebook, Twitter, or take the reign yourself and share a short link any way you like. We can also help you access your contacts from popular email service providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and AOL, so you don’t have to guess on emails addresses either.

Ready to check out these new features? Jump on over to our website here.

Fund Your Open-Source Project on Crowdtilt

Do you currently collaborate on an open-source project or see a clear need for a new one? 

Let Crowdtilt help you boost or jumpstart your project.

Turning to the open-source community for funding is not new, but has become a lot easier in recent years. Even just a few weeks ago, this project was posted to Kickstarter to help people install Ruby on Rails on their Mac computers. 

While Kickstarter is great for funding larger projects, Crowdtilt allows you to go after smaller initiatives that you know would be supported by a specific community. And because of the all-or-nothing approach, it’s a risk-free approach to gauge interest in a new feature or entire project.

Needless to say, not all campaigns will be embraced with equal enthusiasm especially when a realistic funding goal, technical aptitude, or feasible plan is missing. However, if done properly, it can be a great way to collectively fund projects that otherwise would stay stagnant for months or years.

Take a look at this recent campaign aimed at supporting the existing Drupal community. 

While it does not focus on one particular open-source project, it helps developers find one another and reduce the coordination and transaction costs of connecting them with potential projects.

“For example, if a non-profit wants a better donation process built for their web site and can offer their office space, three developers can offer their time, and five interested individuals can fund transportation for the developers — then Drupal gains this feature and everyone benefits, whereas without this coordination it might not have happened at all or been done as a custom code hack that others wouldn’t have been able to use.”

Progress on this projects can be found here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/190094 

So if the bottleneck to your current open-source project is a lack of funding, but you know people would love to get behind the idea, then start a campaign on Crowdtilt today and share it within your community.

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Private Show by Ishi & Booker T. Washington Student this Saturday

This Saturday April 7th, Ishi will be performing a private acoustic show at The Black Swan Saloon in Dallas. The show will be headlined by Spencer Kennedy, a student from Booker T. Washington High School of the Performing and Visual Arts.

Checkout their campaign here: https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/ishi-music

If you are new to the sounds of Ishi, you can get a taste below (just hit play and keep reading). The band is best known for their high energy electronic music with influences of Soul, Funk & Folk to Electro, Techno & House. Since their start a couple of years ago, the group has built a loyal following by creating positive atmospheres that encourage everybody to just be themselves and let loose.

Ishi’s “Pastel Lights” with re-edit of the 80’s classic Solarbabies

In 2010, Ishi released their debut record “Through The Trees” and received awards for “Best New Act” & “Best Electronic/Dance Act” from the Dallas Observer the same year. In 2011, they again took the top spot for “Best Electronic/Dance Act.”

The band is currently raising money for their second album and dedicated half of the funds raised to go towards Booker T. Washington High School.

The school is Dallas Independent School District’s arts magnet school and has over the years graduated many accomplished performers and artists. Prominent examples include Norah Jones, Erykah Badu and many others.

The private acoustic show can be attended by supporters of their campaign. For $15 or more, you can attend the show and meet the band up close. The group is also offering t-shirts, mentions in the liner notes, signed posters, and more for contributions towards their second album. No matter what amount you donate, you will get the digital downloads of their first album, as well as remixes of their popular songs. 

If you are in the Dallas area this weekend or you just want to support this upcoming band, check out their campaign here.

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/ishi-music

The private acoustic show will be on 4/7 at 7 pm The Black Swan Saloon - 2708 Elm Street  Dallas, TX 75226

Supporting the Catholic Education in the U.S.

In recent years, there has been one institution that has struggled across the country more than perhaps any other - and that is the education sector in America. While a high-quality education is the bedrock for successful professional careers, proper funding for many schools has become more difficult to come by and in some cases dried up completely.

Even numerous Catholic Schools across the nation, supported by the Catholic Church, had to shut down or find other sources of funding to provide education to their students. And in order to bring a continued education to their students, some schools are taking matters into their own hands. 

For example, John Paul II Catholic High School in Tallahassee, Florida found out earlier this year that that their diocese would no longer be able to provide traditional levels of financial assistance and the school had to become self-funded.

With no other alternative, the board and community launched into an ambitious fundraising campaign to raise $676,000 before May 1st of this year.

Since January, the group has raised more then 2/3 of their required funding and turned to Crowdtilt to crowdfund another $99K towards their goal by April 9th.

More importantly, the Catholic community, including Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida and leading proponent of school choice, picked up on the ambitious campaign pursued by JPII and provided support on a national level. The article from Catholic.org can be read here as well as other front page coverage. Currently, the campaign is just 9% away from tilting and if you would like to make a contribution and share the campaign with a friend, you can follow this link to the campaign page.

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/preservation-of-the-only-catholic-high-school-in-floridas-capital-city

How Crowdtilt is allowing groups to do more offline

Our goal at Crowdtilt is to help groups do more awesome things offline by building the world’s easiest way to pool money together.

If you hosted a casual/informal party for St. Patrick’s Day and didn’t use Crowdtilt, you probably either asked each person to bring food and drinks, or you bought everything in advance and asked people to pitch in when they arrived (Or God forbid, you made friends buy tickets online to your casual party through a service like Eventbrite).

If it was the latter, how much of your expenses were you able to recover and how much effort was required to get the money from each person?

This is where Crowdtilt comes in. For example, this group raised more than $1,000 for their St. Patrick’s Day party to cover everything from kegs of green-dyed beer, an abundance of food, all the way to blow-up leprechauns (the full list is actually pretty impressive).

You might think $1,000 is a lot for a party among friends, but the beauty of running a campaign on Crowdtilt is that no credit cards were charged until the campaign tilted. It’s simply the best way to get the whole group on board with an idea (and is a much less risky approach to planning things), instead of hoping enough people show up with cash in their hands. Admit it, collecting $1,000 at the door of your own party would be awful… So awful in fact, that without Crowdtilt, you’d likely just resort to making everyone just bring food and drinks so that you don’t front the costs for everyone. Well tsk tsk - there’s no point in imagining a world without Crowdtilt, because THAT WORLD IS OVER! 

And while this is a typical example of the power of you+Crowdtilt, what we love the most, is that this campaign (and subsequent party) was funded in just hours - and instead of food and drinks, it was an extravaganza that would’ve made St. Pat proud.

So, what is keeping you from planning your next awesome get together? Is it the fear of getting enough money from friends?… Fear no longer, Crowdtilt is here. 

Top 7 SXSW Group Discounts

SXSW is bigger this year than ever before. With more than 250,000 people anticipated for the music festival and 25,000 present at the interactive part of event, you quickly find yourself moving from one introduction to another. Below is a list of the top group discounts for the week. Use these kickass activities as an excuse to get to know the new chums you’ve just exchanged business cards with or to get out and about the city with your company.

  • River Party Boat - Rent out the Lonestarr riverboat with up to 150 people for a mere $3,000 for the whole night. Add a cash bar or go full out with food and drinks included. The boarding dock is a 10 min walk from the convention center. Limited parking is also available. 
  • Paintball - Bring a group of at least 10 people and get the fields to yourself during the week! $25 per person gets you everything to get going. More rounds can be bought for $5/100 rounds. Field is 30 mins east of downtown.  Advance payment for at least 10 people is needed to reserve field. Call Wade at 512-796-9760. 
  • Segway City Tour - Want to see more of Austin besides the Convention Center and local bar scene? Jump onto a Segway and cruise through the city on a guided tour at $75/rider. Groups of 8+ people get a $25 discount per person. A guide is assigned for each 8 riders.
  • Hang Gliding - If you are looking for some more adrenaline, go with an aerial view of Austin in a hang glider. Get at least 10% discounts for your group. Need to reserve by phone 1-877-338-8805.
  • Skydiving - Ah, hang gliding is for sissies anyways. Go ahead and do it big. Get your group jumping within 3 hours and get at 10% discounts for 10+ brave souls. Otherwise it’s $199/person. The airport is located 30 mins east of Austin.

If you need transportation to any of these activities, you can find a charter bus or van at a reasonable price here. $350 should get 40 people around Austin for 5 hours. 

Last Minute Places to Crash

And if you are still looking for a place to stay for at SXSW, check out these last few places on Airbnb. You can rent out the entire house with other like-minded crazy souls and make this year’s SXSW experience one you’ll never forget. If you need help finding people to join your casa, create a theme for your house (artists, music genres, etc), send us the campaign link, and we’ll throw it on our blog.

Since Crowdtilt can provide you with an incredibly simple and risk-free way of organizing any of these activities, you may find yourself on the Lonestarr party boat before you know it. 

Now that’s how you and your group can make a splash at this year’s SXSW without putting a huge dent in the wallet.

(Note: We are not affiliated or receive a commission from any of these vendors)

*See a spreadsheet of our complete list of group discounts here

New Feature: Custom Message to Contributors

You can now send custom messages to anybody that contributes to your campaign. You can add this message when setting up your campaign. 

Here is the field you will have to fill out in the campaign form. 

Your message will be shown in the email after people contribute to your campaign (regardless whether it is tilted or not).

If you only want to send a message to everybody once your campaign tilted, you can use our older “Contact all contributors” button, and write your message there. 

Weekly Roundup: A Movie Night, Album Recording, and Crawfish Boil Get-together

Take a look at these campaigns from last week.

  • The 2012 Crawfish Boil – In order to support the Texas Children’s Hospital through the Krewe of Cajuns & Cowboys Seventh Annual Crawfish Broil, this group was able to pool the funds ahead of time. Now it’s time for a healthy amount of Crawfish Boil and Beer!

  • MatchStick: An album in Memory of Terry N. Gladstone – In dedication to his mother, Carl Gladstone set out to record a collection of songs he wished he had time to write and sing to her before she passed away last November. The project now lives on at http://music.carlthomasgladstone.com/album/matchstick

  • Point Break Viewing and Party – How do you feel about getting your friends together for a classic movie night and top it off with food and drinks for everybody? That is exactly what this group is doing this week. We really wish we could join.

These are just a few examples of how Crowdtilt can help you pool money for something your group wants to do. Thank you to the admins for letting us feature these campaign. Do you have something coming up that you could use Crowdtilt for? Go ahead and start a campaign!

10 Best Uses for Group-Funding

Whether you know it or not, the social phenomena of group-funding online is starting to take off and soon collecting cash and checks for your group activities will be a thing of the past. Group-funding refers to the pooling of money from a group for something the entire group benefits from. Based on the early examples coming through our site, here are the top 10 uses:

  1. Parties with friends
  2. Party Buses/Limos
  3. Tickets (concerts, movies, shows, etc)
  4. Vacation Rentals/Beach Houses
  5. Group Dinners
  6. Office Parties
  7. T-Shirt/Apparel 
  8. Group Gifts (Wedding, Baby Shower, etc)
  9. High School Reunions
  10. Tailgates

Sounds like fun right? So the questions is, what are you going to group-fund next?