Lucky Ant has only been around for a little over three months, but it works like this: Each week, the creators choose one project from a local business in your neighborhood--something like building an outdoor patio for a local restaurant--and neighborhood residences can chip in to help pay for that project. Lucky Ant functions a lot like Kickstarter, in that those who contribute to the project get a reward for doing so, like a gift certificate from the restaurant.

"For the last 3 months, Lucky Ant has been running hyperlocal crowdfunding in the Lower East Side, but we are now ready to make our first move and we are growing to a second neighborhood as of this week," said Lucky Ant founder Jonathan Moyal in an email to Betabeat.

So far, many of the posted projects have reached their funding goals--Grotto, a Lower East Side Italian restaurant, successfully raised $7,500 to cover their outdoor patio. Bari Studio, a fitness center, raised $5,000 so that they could trademark their name.

Considering the neighborhood's known love for the mom-and-pop stores, branching out into Williamsburg seems like a natural progression. Lucky Ant's first Williamsburg-based project is for Pie Corps, to help the fledgling business build a bigger oven. And who doesn't like pie?