Currently there are a lot of reports about how to finance projects without bank loans, debt and other conventional methods of financing. These range from swapping to methodes like the Vermögenspool (german). Another method is crowdfunding, which means to finance projects through a donation platform like betterplace.org.

The advantage of this kind of financing is that you have a funding commitment even before the start of the project.Very popular is this method for example for the financing of books, which are then often offered free as an eBook or printed . I want to recommend two of these books.

1. Sophia Novack is an apassionate permaculture geek and environmental activist (as she says), studying in Prague, Czech Republic, and author of the permuculture media blog as well as the permuculture directory with lots of permaculture design courses around the world. She wants to write a free eBook on Urban Permaculture as well as create an permaculture Q&A and a wiki site. You can support her project on http://www.indiegogo.com/OpenPermaculture
2. The second one is a manual in spanish language on economic disobedience written by a group of people called derecho de rebelion (right to rebellion). The book will be published free on the Internet and 5000 copies as a paper edition. You can contribute to this project on http://www.verkami.com/projects/1303-manual-de-desobediencia-economica

Most of the crowdfunding projects have one thing in common: you get perks if you support the project. So let’s contribute and make the world a better place ;-)

UPDATE 2013-08-21:

This post needs an update.

Bad news: I looks like Sophia Novack disappeared with the money she raised for the project via indiegogo. All her websites are offline o used by someone else. I already wondered that nobody sent any update after the crowdfunding finished. It looks like the idea of her Open Permaculture e-book was just a fraude. If Anybody knows more about this case, I’ll be happy to hear about it as I also spent money for this project.

Good News: The other book i promoted here is already published, at least as a free pdf-download in spanish an catalan: http://www.derechoderebelion.net/manual-desobediencia-economica-2013/?lang=es