As with the earlier, successful Kickstarter project by Jim Mallinson and Mark Singleton, to write The Roots of Yoga, I find this new method of crowd-sourcing funding for academic work exciting and interesting. I think it has a real place as a supplement to more familiar methods of fund-raising through applications to centralized finance sources controlled by the bureaucracies that we all love to hate.
I might try it myself some time (but Kickstarter is only available in the USA and UK at present).
I have donated to Michael's project and I wish him great success.
Best,
Dominik