How about replacing money with time?
This just hit me, not sure if I am making sense, or if it is too vague. Just want to know what people think of it here.
Maybe something meaningful comes out of the group mulling here.
Throwing it out for discussion.
I like this idea. I could get behind this sort of project.
I suppose people could do copywriting, legal, financial, art, design, etc etc for a project. But then you have to differentiate who's actually contributing meaningful results, who's just wasting time, who's causing more harm than good, etc etc.
Yes, but that's only for developers (or, in some cases, designers). With OP's idea, it could be anybody... music composers, film editors, developers, historical experts, etc.
However I don't think it could ride the same wave of popularity that Kickstarter has. KS works as well as it does because there are many thousands of people who browse it like a store, who are willing to drop $5-$100 on a project, to get some rewards or at least warm fuzzies. In other words they have gamified the pledging system, so that financial support happens as a byproduct of people 'upvoting' cool projects they like.
I don't know if this would work for volunteering, because it's a lot harder to make good on a commitment to volunteer than it is to authorize Amazon to charge you $20 a month from now. You also would not get as many casual backers, the kind who treat KS as a store, who want something out of a project, and are not backing projects just to support them.