Piggybackr is an American crowdfunding website for students and youth teams to fundraise for their schools, projects, and causes online.[1] It is compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, meaning that children under the age of 13 must have parental involvement with their projects. Children as young as 5 can run fundraising projects online. Backers of projects can post public comments, but cannot communicate directly with the children posting projects.[2]
Description
Piggybackr has been described as “Kickstarter for students.”[3] Unlike Kickstarter, children offer "thank you gifts" including advertising for companies, such as committing to running a lap, putting a business' logo on their page, or giving someone a shout-out on Facebook.[4][5]
History
Piggybackr was founded in 2012 by Andrea Lo and Keenahn Jung. It was launched out of the AngelPad accelerator.[6] Andrea Lo's 12-year-old sister had just begun to fundraise the year before, in the same way that Lo did 10 years earlier as a child. Lo spent about a year developing a way to fundraise for children that used Facebook.[7] After another year of private beta, Piggybackr launched nationwide on April 17, 2013 with over 1,500 projects and $250,000 raised by kids. The website's customers include national and regional chapters of youth organizations like FIRST Robotics and YMCA.[8]
