Well, I got excited about checking out kickstarter, but they don't allow projects for "cash equivalent" things... they used some other word than things. I forget.
As I've said before, and i will probably say it again in the future. If we ever want to do a kickstarter type crowd funding campaign I continue to be more than happy to escrow it.
No need to do a kickstarter, just donate directly to devs!
http://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/
All of these people agree: http://getmonero.org/getting-started/donate/hall-of-fame
I definitely think there is some value to the crowd funding model. People dont know what they are getting from a random donation. They dont know whether they effected anything. Maybe if they hadnt donated nothing would have been any different. Maybe the devs would have accomplished exactly as much as if they hadnt donated. With a crowd funding campaign we could do something like, if we are able to raise X resources by Y date than these three devs will be able to work full time on monero for 6 months rather than as a side project. Or something like this. Then contributors know what they are purchasing, rather than just some nebulous idea of maybe monero will be made better. Additionally it gives people a goal that they can push for, people can say look we only need 1,000 more monero before we reach the goal. They can track the progress. People have conversations about it and so follow the progress in a way that they dont with just people giving random donations when ever. Its definitely not the same.
Something like this becomes more feasible with the increasing Monero price.
Thats what you call a positive feedback loop