Permissibility of using Kickstarter funds
29-3-2014 | IslamWeb
Question:
Asalam-u-Alykum, brother. Let me first explain what kickstarter is?Kickstarter is a crowdfunding platform. The company’s stated mission is to help bring creative projects to life. There's no loan or interest involved. People willing fund your business without wanting anything return. So, my question was whether I could fund my business through it? Even though I'm not in dire need. It would be kind of you if you could check the site for a sec or at least read about it on wikipedia to have more idea of it. May Allah reward you for answering my question. Ameen.
Answer:
All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad 
is His slave and Messenger.
In principle, there is no objection to presenting the idea of a project or program and then searching for someone to fund it, be the funder a donor, a partner, a manufacturer or anything along those lines.
According to our investigation on the Internet, we learned that there are people who have creative ideas but are not able to get financing, and there are people who have the ability to finance but do not have creative ideas, so the site that you mentioned acts as a mediator between the two parties.
The small project creator makes a demonstrative video of the product or explains it in any available manner that shows all the potentials and the creator determines the required amount to finance his project and the target deadline to reach the objective from one day to 60 days, and so on, and then he sends this to the administrator of Kickstarter, who will publish it if it meets the conditions they have set to ensure integrity.
Then, visitors to the site start to view the creative project, and if they are impressed by the product, they register an initial promise to buy the product. If the required funds are reached, the funds are deducted from the people who have registered to buy the product in the previous stage. If the required funds are not reached, the project is cancelled and no funds are deducted. If the target funds are reached, it is given to the project creator within 14 days, and he or she begins to execute the idea and then they ship the product to the people who bought it. Examples of projects that have been concluded in this manner are the design and production of the iPad smart cover and mobile phone cover.
If this is the case, and the transaction is done according to what is stated above and no unlawful terms and conditions are stipulated in any contract, then this is permissible. In general, each transaction is different and we cannot pass a general ruling on all of them. So, if someone would like to make a particular transaction and knows its terms and conditions, then he should ask about it specifically in order to get an appropriate answer.
Allaah Knows best.