Kickstarter has added another level of support for creators looking to get their projects funded on the platform: Forward Funders, organizations that commit to spend a given amount of money to back projects.
The first pledge came from the newly created Creative Capital/Skoll Fund, which has promised to spend $500,000 to support “innovative and impactful projects across all categories by Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx creators in the United States (US citizens, permanent residents, and O-1 visa holders),” according to the announcement on the Kickstarter website. Creators can apply for funding, and if their application is successful, the funder will pledge up to 5-10% of the campaign goal. So far, the fund has backed two comics projects, a print collection of the Comixscape webcomic and the first issue of Hedge, a fantasy comic about a deaf teenager in New York City; Comixscape has met its funding goal, but despite the additional support, Hedge did not.
Kodansha, the largest publisher in Japan, has pledged $50,000, which they plan to spread out in smaller donations to a larger number of projects. So far, they have backed 137 Kickstarter campaigns, including several graphic novels.
Source: ICv2
