I mention this above, but my first thought on "impact" is that they're really neat experiments, but it's very much in the domain of "enough preliminary data to keep a grad student busy for a bit and justify a pilot grant submission". A great stepping stone, but...

I'll be honest, I looked at crowdfunding when I was working on my dissertation. It was more work than an industry grant (especially when you include wooing the public) for a fraction of the money.