The New York Times published an article (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/17/arts/kickstarter-and-artspire-as-models-of-arts-financing.html) about the proliferation of crowdfunding in the arts. The article focused on Kickstarter, as most crowdfunding articles do, but also mentioned Artspire.org (http://www.artspire.org) and USA Projects (http://www.usaprojects.org), two newer sites that focus on funding artists and are both non-profits. The USA Projects model is interesting in that a portion of each donation is shared:
United States Artists uses a “shared fund-raising model” that gives artists 81 cents out of every dollar, with the rest going to support training and education programs, fees and grants to other artists.
This kind of news coverage will help move crowdfunding further into the mainstream.