Kneecap legal fees crowdfunder suddenly doubles - huge donations apparently roll in over couple of days after weeks of trickle threatened loss of cash pot from fans
Kneecap’s legal fees crowdfunder abruptly doubled the amount in its cash pot, with tens of thousands of pounds apparently pledged in less than 48 hours.
A CrowdJustice appeal for fans to pay legal bills around rapper Liam Og O hAnnaidh’s upcoming terror case looked in danger of not meeting its target a week ago, which would have meant the group got nothing, and the people behind it extended its deadline until August.
Launched last month, it raked in more than £19,000 over its first few days around the time of O hAnnaidh’s first court appearance in mid-June.
But then the amount of donations fell off. In the appeal’s first few days around 750 fans threw cash at the band, but over the next three weeks only about 150 more joined them.
The News Letter highlighted the deadline extension one week ago; for several days afterwards, donations continued to trickle in – only to abruptly leap in the number of pledges received in the middle of this week.
Between Monday night and Wednesday afternoon, the crowdfunder leaped from more than £23,000 to over £52,000, with the number of fans pledging money jumping from less than 1,000 to over 2,400. That means about twice as many fans donated in less than two days than did during the initial flurry of activity when it first launched amid a raft of high-profile national news stories about the court case.
CrowdJustice allows people to pledge money anonymously, and only a fraction of the 1,400 or so who donated over the space of a few hours this week must have allowed their names to be published. Of the publicly documented amounts, most of the donations were around the £10 to £30 mark.
Kneecap themselves have made little mention of the crowdfunder since mid-June when they stated it was set up by “some friends” to “take on the British witch-hunt”.
The appeal initially aimed to get £30,000 for the legal fees, and a week ago was in danger of not making it by the initial deadline. The sudden avalanche of donations over the past couple of days crossed that line, guaranteeing Kneecap will get that sum; the target was extended to £50,000, which was also passed within hours, and the appeal now aims to get £100,000 in pledges.