It seems that everyday people are searching for ways to raise money to meet a particular need, dream, or business idea. The ability to do this over the last few years has become exponentially easier with the advent of crowdfunding.  

Crowdfunding is the concept of having people donate money online towards an objective or a cause. Crowdfunding is highly popular and very effective at raising money for a myriad of reasons. What follows are the five best ways you can use the resources of crowdfunding to obtain what you want while getting help from friends, family and from those around the world.

New Product Ideas

Do you have an interesting idea for a product? Perhaps it's something very complex that will be used for industrial purposes or something very small and simple that people can hold in their hand and use every day? If so, getting the patents for your invention can be easy, while raising the money so it can be produced can be quite difficult without crowdfunding. Crowdfunding not only gives you investors (backers), but it also gives you customers, marketing, and proof of concept (validation that people will purchase your product). Crowdfunding on sites such as Kickstarter or IndieGoGo provides a great medium to launch your product and get your initial customer base.

Start Up a Business

While many people use Crowdfunding to raise money for items that they have invented, you can do the same for starting up your own company. In return, you can offer t-shirts, gifts or even bragging rights so that those who contributed can reap the benefits of your business. Crowdfunding is the perfect way to raise money for any niche or specialty businesses that otherwise would have had a great deal of difficulty getting standard loans or raising money from investment firms. With the recent passing of the JOBS act, companies will now be able to raise funds and gather investors through equity Crowdfunding. We will only be talking about non-equity Crowdfunding for the sake of this post.  

Disaster Relief 

When disaster strikes, there are many charitable organizations that move in to help those in need. However, many of these same organizations either lack the full resources or have inefficient ways of raising money that can be used in time. Crowdfunding allows thousands of people to contribute to disaster relief with only a very small percentage going towards fees or upkeep on the crowdfunding site.

Crowdfunding, with the assistance of social media, now provides organizations a vehicle to raise money for disaster relief much faster than ever before.

Make a film

It may seem rather odd, but crowdfunding today is being used to help creative people make the movie of their dreams. As of recent, film equipment has become much more affordable, but yet at the same time the number outlets for creative filmmakers to find the money they need have been reduced. This combination leaves crowdfunding as one of the best ways to raise the capital needed to finance the next great film. Filmmakers including novice weekend warriors all the way to Spike Lee have used crowdfunding to fund their feature films.

For Gifts 

Raising funds for personal gifts is quickly becoming a popular form of crowdfunding. WishBooklet is one of the leaders in this new space of "gift crowdfunding". WishBooklet can best be described as a Kickstarter for gifts, an easy way to share the gifts you want with your friends and family and get them to pitch in to buy the gift for you. The beauty of WishBooklet is that any number of friends and family can join in on crowdfunding the gift of your dreams. WishBooklet provides a super easy way to get what you really want and nobody has to pay a ton of money to get it for you. If WishBooklet isn't your style, you can always check out other gifting web-apps such as Aggregift and Giftsimple.

It's no secret that crowdfunding can not only solve problems, but help dreams come true as well. Consider crowdfunding when trying to raise money for a particular cause, product or idea.

Author bio
Eric Santos is a blogger, social media guru, and entrepreneur. Eric is the co-founder and Business Guy at WishBooklet, a gift crowdfunding web-app that makes getting the gifts you really want easy. Eric is the current CEO of Dwibbles and former founder and CEO of Soshowise Inc. Eric received a B.S in Entrepreneurship from CSUF.