Have you ever 'done' fan-funding? How was the experience?

I ask because two projects went live yesterday that got me re-thinking how I felt a few years about fan-funding. Sure we've seen Amanda Palmer raise a million dollars and that chap from Scrubs is making a follow-up to Garden State, but a lot of the stuff I've seen has slowly shifted from being a bit desperate (former major label bands selling a chance to be their roadie) to slightly classier.

The projects I saw were these two.
1. Steve Gullick's Nirvana book - which is essentially available to pre-order and having loved his photography since I can remember picking up magazines, it seems like a fairly essential thing to have in my life alongside my back issues of Careless Talk and Loose Lips (the mag he does with Stevie Chick) http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/nirvanadiary

2. Esben & the Witch are starting a label - Mike Diver posted this yesterday, can imagine a lot of DiSsers (even the ones who claim Spotify is too expensive) would want to get behind this http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/esbenandthewitch

Be curious which campaigns you have supported or what you could imagine supporting in the future. I'm toying with using fan-funding to help finish restoration work on DiS' code and to evolve the site a little (advertising isn't really the future, so to keep things going I - like most publishers - need to find a 'new model'), but I'd need to come up with something like an 'online bakesale' of stuff people would want to pay for. Got quite a few ideas. But this thread wasn't really about that.