Crowd-funding is like a flash mob, with fewer spontaneous dance routines. It’s like a charity telethon, but the beneficiary is a penniless documentary-maker. It offers anyone the chance to be a patron of D.I.Y creativity. And it may just change the way we conceive of venture capital forever.

Kickstarter, as its tagline boasts, is the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects. For the uninitiated, it works like an online grassroots fundraising campaign. Thousands of artists, actors, musicians, filmmakers, writers and miscellaneous creatives create a profile for their project, set a dream budget and appeal to friends and strangers through social media to donate money.

Have you ever seen that show Dragon’s Den, where nervous inventors pitch their cherished idea for a product to a panel of cranky millionaires? This is a much friendlier, digital version of that.

Say, for instance, you have the irrepressible urge to make an iPhone app but you don’t have the money. Rather than applying for an exclusive grant or corporate sponsorship, you might use a site like Kickstarter to raise the money. You would upload an outline of your idea, a plan of attack, and your dream budget, then beg acquaintances to donate as much as they can.

This way, the burden on creative entrepreneurs is not to prove the financial viability of a project, or even the possibility of profit. In many cases, there is no projected profit at all - unless you count the currency of artistic satisfaction. The burden of proof is that a project needs, or deserves to be made. This is a profound shift away from traditional channels of venture capital. If this co-op model spreads to other industries, it could change the meaning of investment altogether.

As Kickstarter co-founder Yancey Strickler says, the question is no longer ‘Can this make money?’ but ‘Should this exist?’. The model relies entirely on the generosity, curiosity and disposable income of strangers, friends and art-lovers around the world.

It’s highly effective, too - in February this year, the ‘Elevation Dock’ (an aluminum iPhone dock) was the first Kickstarter project to reach US$1 million dollars, with more than 10, 000 individual donors. In 2011 alone, more than US$100 million was donated to various projects on Kickstarter, which is up a whopping $28 million from 2010. I expect the cumulative sum for 2012 will be astounding.

The revolutionary aspect of the crowd-funding movement is that there is no return on investment - and that changes the way the creative industry operates, drastically. It asks ordinary people to be patrons of the arts, which is something usually reserved for Bill Gates & co. It’s micro-philanthropy, in its simplest form. It operates largely by appealing to people who believe that creative expression is a worthwhile investment. As budgets are cinched in globally, funding for the arts gets left by the wayside - but this is a way for ordinary folk to reclaim the arts.

Imagine a street artist waltzing into a venture capitalist’s office, easel under one arm, paint on his overalls, equipped with naught but talent and a brush. He’s there to ask for in-kind donations for a mural he wants to paint in a public park. The scene is ludicrous! His chances of sponsorship are minuscule. Now imagine the very same artist mobilizing people who love art and beauty to donate to an online campaign. It’s simpler, sleeker and entirely achievable.

Welcome to the crowd-funding revolution.

Here’s a happy Crowd Funding story of comedy, long distance friendship and financial success.

A delightful friend of mine, Paddy Magee, is working as a comedian in London. He wanted to take his stand-up comedy show, inspired by Aesop’s fables, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival - but it’s prohibitively expensive for someone who trades in comedy. He added up his expenses, including travel, accommodation, venue hire, lighting, and promotional material and uploaded that number and a short video to a site called WeFund in the hope that people would help to pay his way.

Now, I’m not in the right hemisphere to see the show in person. So when I donated to Paddy’s project, the only thing I get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing he will make audiences on the other side of the world chuckle. Remember, all Paddy had to do was convince people that his show needed to exist. He relied entirely on the financial enthusiasm of friends and strangers to fund a project - and has surpassed his target.