Scoot Kingsley Clark who is the lead developer of the Pods Development Framework has successfully acquired the funds necessary to complete development work for Pods 2.0 along with the community website. After launching his project on Kickstarter.com, he managed to get the $1,500.00 goal necessary within 24 hours. However, the project has been so successful at getting pledges, he is nearly 200% or $2,000.00 above the original goal with 7 days left in the pledging period. With regards to what Scott plans on doing with the extra cash, this is what he says under the FAQ section of the project page:

All additional money raised goes towards the Pods Foundation to help fund future development, travel for WordCamps and presentations, and hosting costs. So really, 2.0 is now funded – BUT you can still fund the foundation and everything it stands for.

You might be wondering what he means by Pods Foundation. When I had a chance to speak with Scott the other day, he told me that the purpose of the foundation as well as how it’s structured is very similar to the WordPress foundation. I’m pretty sure this is the first WordPress plugin to have it’s own Non Profit foundation attached to it unless you know of another one? Because of the foundation, you can be assured that the money donated will go towards improvement of the plugin and accompanying community website.

Congratulations goes out to Scott as well as his community of users. I have yet to see any other plugin or theme developers use Kickstarter in such a way. Do you think this was a unique opportunity for something like the Pods plugin or could other plugin authors leverage Kickstarter successfully to fund development of their projects?