A little goes a long way

Fund it has proved to be a lifeline for cash-strapped cultural projects, writes Alan O’Riordan

A SOUND art project about honey bees and colony collapse disorder, involving the monks of Glenstal Abbey; a community circus in Galway; a host of new plays; and a new visual arts depot. A quick trawl of the crowdfunding site Fund it reveals an incredibly wide range of projects, all looking for small donations to achieve their goals.

The site has been running for just over two years now, and is filling a useful funding niche in these straitened times for artists. Some 25,000 individual donations have raised €1.2 million for successful projects so far, says Stuart McLaughlin of Business to Arts, who run Fund it. Impressively, some 74% of projects reach their target.