Brian E. Frosh is an American lawyer and politician who served as the Attorney General of Maryland from 2015 to 2023. He also served five terms in the Maryland State Senate, representing Maryland's District 16 in Montgomery County. Prior to serving in the Senate, Frosh represented District 16 in the Maryland House of Delegates, serving two four-year terms.
Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows people to solicit funds for an idea, charity, or start-up business. Indiegogo charges a 5% fee on contributions. This charge is in addition to Stripe credit card processing charges of 2,9% + $0.30 per transaction. Fifteen million people visit the site each month.
GoFundMe is an American for-profit crowdfunding platform that allows people to raise money for events ranging from life events such as celebrations and graduations to challenging circumstances like accidents and illnesses. From 2010 to the beginning of 2020, over $9 billion has been raised on the platform, with contributions from over 120 million donors.
Seedrs is an online equity crowdfunding company, headquartered in East London's Tech City, founded in 2009 and launched by Jeff Lynn and Carlos Silva in 2012. Since 2022 it has been a subsidiary of American crowdfunding company Republic.
FundRazr is a free crowdfunding and online fundraising platform released in 2009. FundRazr operates internationally in 35+ countries with the largest markets being United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia. It allows users to run a wide-range of crowdfunding campaigns by creating fundraising pages and sharing it via social media, messaging apps, email and more to raise money for over 100 types of causes such as nonprofit, medical care, education, community help, poverty alleviation, arts, memorials, and animal rescue causes. FundRazr also works with more than 4000 nonprofits, charities and social enterprises with an advanced fundraising toolset for free. The digital fundraising platform provides 8 different campaign types. They include microproject fundraising, peer-to-peer campaigns, wishlist campaigns, recurring donations, branded sponsorship campaigns, DIY projects, sweepstake campaigns, and storefront campaigns.
SeedInvest is an equity crowdfunding platform that connects startups with investors online. The company was founded in 2012 and launched in 2013. SeedInvest has focused on building liquidity in the platform by attracting high-net-worth individuals, family offices and venture capital firms. SeedInvest screens and vets deals before allowing them to take advantage of the JOBS Act exemption permitting General Solicitation. In September 2014 the company launched a partnership with Angel Investing website Gust.
Serial is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig, narrating a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder and developed by This American Life; as of July 2020, it is owned by The New York Times.
Equity crowdfunding is the online offering of private company securities to a group of people for investment and therefore it is a part of the capital markets. Because equity crowdfunding involves investment into a commercial enterprise, it is often subject to securities and financial regulation. Equity crowdfunding is also referred to as crowdinvesting, investment crowdfunding, or crowd equity.
Hae Min Lee was a Korean-American high school student who went missing on January 13, 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland, before turning up dead on February 9, 1999, when her corpse was discovered in Leakin Park, Baltimore. Her autopsy revealed that she had been killed by way of manual strangulation.
Good Shepherd Entertainment is a Dutch video game publisher based in Amsterdam. The company was founded in 2011 and opened its equity crowdfunding platform in September 2012. Gambitious' publishing label was opened in 2014, offering publishing services. In August 2017, Gambitious Digital Entertainment was rebranded Good Shepherd Entertainment whereas they ceased their crowdfunding activities and fully transitioned into being a publisher. Having been a consultant to the company prior, Brian Grigsby now became the CEO of the company.
Fig was a crowdfunding platform for video games. It launched in August 2015. Unlike traditional crowdfunding approaches like Kickstarter, where individuals can back a project to receive rewards, Fig used a mixed model that includes individual backing and the opportunity for uncredited investors to invest as to obtain a share of future revenues for successful projects. At the end of 2017, four projects had begun generating returns, returning 245% to Fig investors.
@HopeMob was a not-for-profit crowdfunding site that raised money for direct aid to worthy causes. It was co-founded by Shaun King and Chad Kellough in 2012. People with specific needs applied to the site and were vetted. The vetting included asking for references, conducting interviews, and researching on social media. Support was then given to approved projects to help them present a compelling case. Funds were raised and used to purchase the specific items people needed, such as a medical procedure; money was not given directly to those raising funds.
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance. In 2015, over US$34 billion was raised worldwide by crowdfunding.
Asiola is an online crowdfunding platform built to support creative and community-driven ideas in Thailand. It was launched in 2015 in Bangkok by a group of founders comprising technology experts, music industry experts and artists in response to Thailand's burgeoning startup scene. Their aim was to provide a way for fledgling ideas to gather attention and get funded.
Rabia Chaudry is a Pakistani-American attorney, author and podcast host. She is a family friend of Adnan Syed—who was the subject of the podcast Serial (2014)--and subsequently wrote a book about his case called Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial (2016), which became a New York Times best seller. Chaudry co-hosts several podcasts, namely Undisclosed, a podcast on Syed's case and others.
Thiruvendran "Thiru" Vignarajah is an American lawyer and politician. He previously was Deputy Attorney General of Maryland. He is a litigation partner at the law firm DLA Piper in Baltimore. He has also been the lead attorney for the State of Maryland in the post-conviction appeals of Adnan Syed, who was wrongfully convicted of murder in the high-profile 1999 killing of Hae Min Lee. He is a four-time candidate for Baltimore State's Attorney and mayor of Baltimore, having run for both positions twice and being defeated in the primary each time.
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was an antisemitic terrorist attack that took place at the Tree of Life – Or L'Simcha Congregation synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The congregation, along with New Light Congregation and Congregation Dor Hadash, which also worshipped in the building, was attacked during Shabbat morning services on October 27, 2018. The perpetrator killed eleven people and wounded six, including several Holocaust survivors. It has so far been the deadliest attack on a local Jewish community in American history, seconded by the 2019 Jersey City shooting committed by a Black Hebrew Israelite (BHI).
The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh is an Islamic educational, social services, and community outreach organization in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1989, it is the largest mosque in the city, attracting 600 to 700 participants for weekly prayers. It provides social services for people of all religious backgrounds and engages in educational outreach and interfaith dialogue to foster community understanding and cooperation.
CrowdJustice is a commercial crowdfunding platform in the United Kingdom and the United States for projects aimed at improving access to the legal system. It was founded in 2014 by Julia Salasky.
The Case Against Adnan Syed is a 2019 true-crime docuseries about Adnan Syed's murder conviction for the killing of Hae Min Lee. It was directed by Amy J. Berg and produced by Working Title Television, among others. The first episode of the four-part series premiered March 10, 2019, on HBO.
