What Is Fan Crowdfunding (Kurafan)? How Japanese Fans Pool Money for Oshi Ads

“Want to chip in and put an ad up for our oshi?” You see the call for supporters, and you hesitate. Here is how kurafan works, what to check before you back a project, and how to prepare if you are the one starting it.

What Kurafan Means

In oshi-katsu, a kurafan (クラファン), short for crowdfunding, is a system in which volunteer fans pool money online to make a support ad or a commemorative project happen. Most campaigns take the support or purchase form of crowdfunding.

Ordinary crowdfunding raises money for a business or a product. With fan crowdfunding, the goal is simply to see the support for your oshi take physical shape. Backers don’t get a dividend. What they get is an ad on a station wall, a funding percentage they can watch climb, and the view on the day.

Origins and History

The word “crowdfunding” combines “crowd” and “funding.” It spread in Europe and the United States in the late 2000s, and platforms began appearing in Japan around 2011.

The starting point in oshi-katsu is the support ad. Support ads are said to have originated in South Korea, and are explained as having spread after fans placed ads for contestants on the audition show PRODUCE 101, which aired in 2016. At first, private fan clubs mostly collected money through remittance apps. Later, using crowdfunding platforms became the norm in Japan too. In 2025, “Senil Crowdfunding” was renamed “Oshi Crowdfunding,” and a service aimed at talent agencies started (PR TIMES, in Japanese).

How It Differs From Similar Terms

• Support ad (ouen koukoku): The classic use of the money raised, with ads at stations, on buses or on giant screens
• Senil: Korean for “birthday,” also used to mean birthday ads and projects
• Seitan iinkai: The person who organizes a birthday project, who may be the one to launch the campaign
• Official oshi crowdfunding: The authorized version, run by the agency or management. Its advantage is fewer worries about rights

Examples

• “The crowdfunding for the senil ad already hit its goal.”
• “It’s a small amount, but I backed the station ad.”
• “This one is an official campaign, so I feel safe putting money in.”
• “The organizer is handling the money and the orders.”
• “I wonder when the postcard reward will arrive.”

Four Things to Check Before You Back a Campaign

1. Who is running it. Look for the organizer’s name, contact details and the organization behind the campaign. This matters most for unofficial projects.
2. What the rewards are and when they ship. What will arrive, and when? The wait is completely different if rewards come after the ad runs or after the whole project ends.
3. What happens if the goal is missed. Does the project go ahead anyway, or are backers refunded? It depends on the funding model.
4. Where and for how long the ad runs. Which medium, and for how many days? If you plan to go see it, you need the dates.

The platform CAMPFIRE has a category for oshi-katsu and support ads, and publishes cases such as a project that reached 381 percent of its goal (CAMPFIRE, in Japanese). Projects beyond ads are growing too: an AR experience project from Fukuoka reached 142 percent of its goal and exhibited at the Oshi-Katsu EXPO on June 24–26, 2026.

If You Are the One Launching It

• Check rights first. If you plan to use your oshi’s photo or logo, look up the agency’s guidelines beforehand. The advertising medium may also need to approve the design.
• Break down the costs up front. Placement fee, design fee, platform fees, and the production and shipping costs of the rewards. The last two are the easiest to overlook.
• Keep records. Track how much you collected, what you ordered and what you paid, and report to your backers. In an unofficial campaign, transparency is everything when it comes to trust.
• Offer a small-pledge tier. Some services let people join from ¥500. An accessible pledge amount can encourage participation.

Where to Turn When Something Goes Wrong

Reports of rewards that never arrive, or organizers who cannot be reached, do happen. Contact the organizer directly first, then the platform operator if that does not resolve it. If there is still no progress, you can call 188, Japan’s consumer hotline, which puts you through to your local consumer affairs center (National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan, Mimamori Shinsen Joho No. 426, FY2022 compiled edition PDF, in Japanese).

Unofficial campaigns in which fans collect money from one another run on goodwill, which also means there is little you can do to follow the money if it becomes unclear where it went. A realistic approach is to pledge understanding that backing means taking part and, depending on the funding model and terms, can also mean making a purchase.

Notes From The Oshi Lab: The Design Challenge of Fans Becoming Advertisers

What fan crowdfunding shows is that fans can be advertisers, not just an audience. The growth of these services has made it easier for fan groups to place ads. Now hundreds of pledges of a few hundred yen each are enough to rent a pillar in a station for a few days. Support ads have been described as a force that can no longer be ignored in outdoor and transit advertising, and railway ad operators have started setting up dedicated application desks.

For talent agencies, this is a mix of welcome and wariness. Fans are promoting the artist at their own expense, but the artist’s image is also being used where management cannot reach. Official schemes appearing can be read as a move to create a framework that takes in this unmanageable energy without shutting it down.

Making things official has a price, though. The charm of volunteer crowdfunding lay in making what an official channel cannot. A tidier framework makes things safer, but it also weakens the quality that anyone can start something. To keep this culture alive, the key is likely to stay open by stating conditions rather than forbidding.

Related Terms

Support ad / Senil / Birthday party without the star