Social impact patronage, part 2

Thanks to @joelfirenze 's post about his new Buy Me A Coffee account, I got started thinking again about my social impact patronage project. I’d been hesitant to launch it for real even though I really want to get it going.

One thing that was the main cause of my procrastination was a steady pipeline of social impact projects. Most creators on Patreon and BMAC have kind of a schedule of content, a pipeline that supporters can come to expect from a monthly subscription patronage. But with ideas for social impact projects, it’s not something that comes bountifully. When COVID was at its peak, there were a lot of needs on the ground that needed solutions, so that was easy. Now that things seem to be under some degree of control, the pressing social issues and needs seem to have faded away, at least from mainstream media. There’s still issues, but most seem to addressed in some way, or by some NGO or charity. So it’s not easy to always have good ideas to work on that suits me as a solo creator, and can be solved using software/nocode tools. And it’s quite stressful to me if people are giving me money on a monthly basis yet I have nothing to show for – this is speaking from direct experience, based on my current supporter of just one.

But now I have a good idea now on how to solve that – crowdsourcing! Perhaps I don’t have to be the one with all the good ideas for social impact projects. They can come to me instead. I can call for project ideas from non-profits and charities, and have a mechanism to filter and select the ones that I can reasonably accomplish. And it’s always better to be working with experts out in the field, who are close to the beneficiaries and the social issues at hand.

So I guess I have to launch this now… no more excuses!