Loving Rhizome’s 50,000 Dollar Webpage. Clever, well-designed, fun, interactive way to raise money–what more could you want? From the site:

“Equal parts fundraiser, art collaboration, billboard, classified ad and community builder, the initiative aims to raise 50,000 dollars for Rhizome by selling 1,000,000 pixels of webspace at 5 cents a piece (cheap!).

The webpage consists of a 1000 pixel x 1000 pixel grid broken up into 10 pixel x 10 pixel blocks. You participate by “buying pixels” – donating money to Rhizome in exchange for blocks of pixels on the grid. The pixels you buy can then be filled with an image of your choice (i.e. your signature, your company’s logo, a portrait of your pet fox “Mr. Sassy”, etc…) and linked (in perpetuity) to whatever URL you want. Your name and URL will also appear in a pop up when someone rolls over your pixels on the webpage.”

Ok, ok, they stole the idea from The Million Dollar Homepage, but it’s still cute crowd sourcing at it’s best and the application for fundraising sparks all sorts of ideas about creative applications for this model of participation.

Pixels must be bought in 10 pixel x 10 pixel blocks (ie – 10×10, 40×100, 200 x 350, etc.) with each block costing $5.  They’re available for purchase until May 28th, at which point the page will be locked and presented at the New Museum’s anual benefit (and remain online forever).

Kudos to Michael Bell-Smith for coming up with the project and to Rhizome for carrying it through!