If you’re a college student or recent graduate, you’ve probably been asked by a friend or acquaintance to help fund a project on a crowdfunding platform.

On March 3, Kickstarter surpassed $1 billion in pledges for created projects in total.  That’s a lot of donated money, considering it launched in 2009. If you do the math, that’s $200 million a year. With the success of 57,979 projects so far, according to Kickstarter’s website, crowdfunding has slowly transitioned from an under-the-radar concept to a mainstream way for entrepreneurs and artists to launch a product, and for charity groups and individuals to raise money for a cause.

Whether the project is launched through Kickstarter, or other crowdfunding sites like IndieGogo, or GoFundMe, it’s no longer an anomaly to reach out to the online community for money. Crowdfunding is now the new normal — and it’s benefitting millennials the most.

Generally speaking, Gen Y is strapped for cash. The growing popularity of crowdfunding among millennials is due to the fact that it’s a successful way to get funding for a project without having to reach out to larger companies for investment. On an individual scale, we’re seeing ideas turned into physical products. In a broader sense, crowdfunding has created a network of entrepreneurs and artists that’s encouraging more and more creativity among our generation.

Though the ages of the creators vary, our generation is right in the middle of this concept that fosters innovation. Go to Kickstarter.com and you can browse a catalog of projects divided into different categories. Kickstarter also curates a page of Staff Picks and Most Popular, in order to drive traffic to a variety of projects. As of March 17, the most popular projects on Kickstarter include albums, an illustration book, a coffee shop and a library designed by 108 eighth grade students from Berkeley, CA.

But Kickstarter isn’t just for the average Joe. After the campaign for the Veronica Mars Movie attracted 91,585 backers and raised $5.7 million last year, the actual movie was released a few days ago on March 14.  The highly publicized campaign brought Kickstarter even further into the public eye and proved crowdfunding as the new way to launch a project, by involving supporters in the process from beginning to end while creating a stronger fan base.

For those raising money for a cause, crowdfunding has also become the norm. Because of Kickstarter’s strict guidelines on approving projects—they require an actual product to be created—charities and causes can be found on IndieGogo and GoFundMe. Like Kickstarter, you can look through campaigns and contribute to what’s important to you. Our generation has the opportunity to look through an archive of causes, giving us the opportunity to make a difference even if it’s not our own project.

Crowdfunding is used by people of all ages, but millennials stand to gain more than just a successfully funded project. We’re experiencing a time when we can browse through tech products, films, albums, magazines and charities and be a part of their success. Crowdfunding as the new normal enables opportunity, promoting creativity and innovation by showing how possible it is to follow through with an idea.

The effect this will have on our generation is lasting. We will continue launching products and starting causes because now we know that if we have a good idea, there are probably a lot of people willing to back it up.

Kate Beckman is a freshman magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @Kate_Beckman.

Published on March 18, 2014 at 1:00 am