Thundafund spin-off Ripple live from today

South African crowdfunding platform Thundafund has today launched community fundraising sister site Ripple, as it looks to allow the main site to focus on raising money for tech and performance projects.

Disrupt Africa broke the news in December that Thundafund, which launched in June 2013, and has thus far raised more than ZAR3.5 million (US$300,000) in crowdfunded money, was to launch Ripple.

The goal of launching the new sister site is to separate community crowdfunding from Thundafund itself, with founder Patrick Schofield telling Disrupt Africa the company hopes to present Thundafund as a platform on which tech entrepreneurs can raise cash.

“The tech becomes really important for us and the other side is performance – theatre, music, dances, all of that stuff,” he said.

“Through the power of crowdfunding and crowdsourced materials, and the movement building capacity of the internet, Ripple hopes to engage and inspire South African citizens around the causes and movements they value most. To empower South Africans and Africans alike to create a future where they are collectively empowered to realise the prosperous communities, healthy natural environments and innovative civil societies they wish for,” the company said.

Schofield does expect to see Thundafund see a drop in projects going live as campaigns are transferred over to Ripple.

“Ripple has a pipeline three times the size of Thundafund’s,” he said. “But that’s because a lot of people are doing really cool stuff in the community space in South Africa.”

Ripple campaigns have deadlines in the same way campaigns on Thundafund do, but organisations can opt for open-ended profiles allowing donations to them at any point. The percentage taken by the company of any money raised is also lower on Ripple.