New Crowdfunding Site Fortua May Help Fund Your Next Vacation

Unless you've been hiding in the backwoods for the past few years by now, you've probably heard of and likely shelled out some of your own hard earned cash for at least one crowdfunding campaign. Maybe you helped finance one of the newest geek gadgets out there, or helped your old college roommate fund his latest new folk music album, or maybe it was dishing out cash for someone to make potato salad.

Crowdfunding is catching more and more steam for some of the craziest projects you've likely never herd of. Whether they be worthwhile causes like helping out entrepreneurs with their latest endeavors or donating funds to help victims of disasters or just funding someone's wildest dreams! However, these days it isn't just for underresourced creatives. The newest kid on the block, Fortua, launched just last month as a crowdfunding option for athletes, event organizers, and entrepreneurs in the outdoor adventure space.

Fortua campaigns cover a wide range of concepts—users can raise money for documentaries, books, events, gear startups, or specialty outdoor events (think camp-outs, 4wheeling treks ect). Some conservation groups have even taken to the site and already used it to pay for trail restoration projects.

Luckily for us outdoor adventurous types of geeks the site opens the door to a new creative way to potentially fund our wildest outdoor adventurers. With the right pitch, the site could potentially be used to find other outdoor enthusiasts that might possibly be willing to help fund, or share costs for personal trips. The catch there is that like most crowdfunding sites you'll need some good marketing skills and personality!

Users can use Fortua to run a Keep-it-All campaigns, in which they keep all donations regardless of how much they raise, or a All-or-Nothing campaign, in which backers are only charged if the campaign reaches its target goal. In either case, Fortua takes a 5% cut of the funds raised and charges a 2.9% fee for per contribution. Additionally one percent of Fortua's revenue is donated annually to 1% for the Planet to protect natural places, forests, rivers, lakes, oceans, and wildlife for generations to come.

The service is still pretty new, so most of the campaigns hosted on the site are still "sample campaigns" put up by Fortua itself. But the results of the site's few real campaigns suggest that it really will prove to be a powerful fundraising tool—in just a few weeks, several projects have raised tens of thousands of dollars.