Going online and raising money the social-networking way

Yvonne Latty was in the final stages of producing and directing a 30-minute documentary about uranium contamination on Navajo land when it occurred to her that she had a problem.

"I was at a pivotal moment in the editing process when I realized I was out of money," said Latty, a former reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News.

One of her graduate students at New York University, where Latty is a clinical associate professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, suggested a "crowd-sourced" fund-raising website called Kickstarter.com.

Basically, you pitch a project - film, music album, comic book, technology innovation, new product design - and let the wisdom and whim of people on the Internet decide whether money is pledged to your great idea.

You set a fund-raising minimum and have a time limit - in Latty's case, $12,000 and 30 days. If you don't reach your goal before the deadline, nothing is owed by those who pledged. It's all or nothing.

"The process of getting started is painless," she said. "But the next 30 days [are] painful as you wait for the pledges."

The deadline for Latty's documentary is April 9. (To learn more, visit her Kickstarter page at http://kck.st/enGxdW.)

What do financial supporters get for their contributions? An appreciative gift, depending on what they donated. A pledge of $15 to Latty's project, for example, will get the donor a DVD copy of the documentary. A pledge of $10,000 will yield a swaggy assortment of goodies, plus dinner with Latty at "a fantastic restaurant."

The money for the gifts comes from the donations, as does a 5 percent fee that goes to pay Kickstarter's own expenses. There is also a fee of 3 percent to 5 percent that covers the cost of processing credit cards through Amazon.com.

Similar websites - including RocketHub.com and IndieGoGo.com - also exist to serve you, depending on what you need funded. CrowdRise.com, for example, is being used to raise funds for disaster relief in Japan.

Kickstarter began in Brooklyn in 2009 with about $300,000 in seed money. Today, the site generates more than $1 million in pledges a week, spokesman Justin Kazmark said.

"More than 17,000 projects have launched on Kickstarter; more than 6,000 have been successful," Kazmark said.

Among the more notable and amusing Kickstarter projects is a campaign to fund a statue of RoboCop in Detroit. With two days left - the pledge window closes Saturday - the project had exceeded its $50,000 goal.

Product innovation also is rewarded, and something that captures the imagination can soar. The PadPivot, a table and lap stand for iPads and similar devices, has received more than $190,000 in pledges. The original funding goal was $10,000.

And Resurrect Dead, the Philadelphia documentary about the mysterious Toynbee Tiles that won a directing award at this year's Sundance Film Festival, was partially funded through Kickstarter.

Before Latty turned to Kickstarter, she had raised nearly $50,000 through grants. But the grant process is time-consuming and cumbersome - definitely not where you look for a quick infusion of last-minute cash.

So far, Latty said, she has been pleased with Kickstarter: "They are very clear about what works, and so you feel really supported through a very stressful situation.

"I am honestly a wreck," she said. "I worry constantly about raising the money, because the topic is compelling and important."

Her documentary explores the impact of Cold War uranium mining on the Navajo people, and the possible return of mining activity because of renewed interest in nuclear power.

"Kickstarter is really a great thing for the creative community," she said. "Very innovative and a great use of the social-media contacts we all are acquiring."