FundAnything, backed by Donald Trump and founded by Bill Zanker, has been on the crowdsourcing scene for a month now but aims to set itself apart from IndieGoGo and Kickstarter with the power of celebrity. The neophyte crowdfunding site has tapped veteran producer Brad Wyman (Monster, Barb Wire) as its CCO – that’s Chief Crowdfunding Officer – and head of Film/Video/Web in charge of developing fundraising projects and building a worldwide sales team. Wyman most recently did a stint at rival crowdfunder IndieGoGo and will look to help nurture fundraising projects and invest FundAnything’s own seed money to help select projects meet their full or partial funding goals. FundAnything is open to projects that span film, television, webseries, and other types of projects including music, gaming, and nonprofit, but unlike other crowdsourcing competitors is actively looking for celebrity-fronted campaigns. “We’re looking to celebritize crowdfunding,” Zanker tells me of FundAnything’s emphasis on campaigns by celebrities, a la Zach Braff‘s recent $ 3M Kickstarter success. “Anybody that has a fan base is a celebrity – Youtube celebrities, business celebrities.” At the FundAnything launch Trump gave $ 180K in cash to attendees as a pricey publicity stunt. While crowdfunding is still familiar to only a small percentage of Americans, FundAnything’s banking on Trump’s celebrity and 2.2M Twitter fans to spread FundAnything awareness farther than its rival services.
