Crowdfunding site Kickstarter will open for Canadian business on September 9, making it easier for creatives and backers in the land of the maple leaf to get promising projects off the ground.
The site's 13 categories cover a diversity of projects from industry veterans to first-timers looking for minimal but essential support.
Projects can be found in art, design, photography, fashion, film and music, comics and publishing, games, technology, dance and theater.
Typically, they run for a one-to-three month period, and offer site visitors a variety of tiered rewards according to the sums donated, often including limited or special editions of a finished product.
Design, technology, and video games have proven to be some of the site's biggest pulls, while films are gaining prominence.
Some of the top fund raisers include the Pebble E-Paper watch ($10m), an Android-powered games console called the Ouya ($8.6m), a 3D printer ($2.9m) and a clutch of video games from established designers ("Torment: Tides of Numenera" raising $4.1m).
Most recently, writer-producer Rob Thomas and actress Kristen Bell cleared $5.7m for a film based on the "Veronica Mars" TV series, which inspired actor and director Zach Braff to seek crowdsourced backing for a follow-up to "Garden State," totaling $3.1m in the process.
Though such sizable sums are not representative of the Kickstarter ecosystem as a whole, the New York-based company has indicated that punters attracted by big-name projects tend to go on and back lesser-known proposals as a result.
Though the original site welcomes projects from all over the world, it has conducted its business in US dollars or (since October 2012) UK pounds sterling.
Successful Canadian projects have included a self-watering patch planter, a coffee press, the Alpha heart rate monitor watch, and Windows and PlayStation 4 game "Mercenary Kings."
