At first I thought of returning the money to backers if the target was not meet, but this brings more complexity as not all votes are worth the same and that could bring all other kind of disputes.
So if a backer asks for 300 dollars and gets 50, he will receive 50 and try to use it in the best way possible. Backers votes will still be used towards that cause and the applicant will have to look for other sources of funding as well.
I really appreciate your input as I want this to be a community effort. Feel free to join our steemit.chat channel for further discussion.
Thanks a lot!
One idea for you is to have a minimum and a maximum funding target, and allow applicants to describe what they plan to accomplish at each of those extremes.
If the campaign doesn't reach the minimum target, the funds should be returned to the patrons (I think you have to figure out a solution for that, regardless). However, dependent on where the project lands on the scale between minimum and maximum, patrons can have reasonable expectations as to the output of the project.
Also, there's an opportunity for stretch goals at certain milestones beyond the maximum funding target. If you wanted to do that, I'd just scrap the maximum funding target entirely, and just have a minimum with multiple stretch goals beyond it.
Again, I love the problem you're trying to solve, keep at it!