While I certainly wouldn't say no to making money off of it, that's actually secondary. I just would like to see it become reality.

I think he meant you are going to have to shell out some before raking in any. The basic idea is that a developer's time isn't free, and however awesome your idea may be, it won't become a reality in and of itself. You will need resources to achieve your goal, resources which you may not be ready (or able) to acquire or even apprehend. While I certainly understand your position on wanting to push forward and finish your project, it may be unrealistic and even outright impossible to do so if appropriate measures are not taken.

It is certainly worthwile to plan ahead but I believe you have your priorities wrong. You should first take a look at the bigger picture and carefully consider your next immediate move, which should probably be, "do I really want do to this".

Does this sound like a valid course of action?
I'm thinking first, I try to get a team that doesn't require payment up front (This is probably the hardest part)
Second, get that team to produce a demo.
third, Put said demo on Kickstart.
(I'm resisting a south park "profit" joke here)
fourth, if kickstart is successful, use that money to pay the devs for the demo, and the production of the game.

That pretty much won't work, If you pick a developer at random he is likely to have 10-20 ideas of his own that he wants to work on (a team will usually have hundreds of ideas, noone is actually looking for more ideas for games to make), You need to give people a reason to work on your idea instead of their own ideas.

Try to answer these questions:

What do you bring to the table that makes it a better idea for a skilled developer to invest their time in your project rather than investing it in their own favourite project ? (time=money, asking a developer to spend a month working for you without guaranteed payment is no different than asking him to invest a months salary in your company)

If your idea is unique, why do you think noone has made something similar yet ? How big is the target audience ? How much does the game cost to develop ? (If you plan on using free labor you should still convert the time into money for this purpose), how likely are you to actually sell enough copies to cover the development costs ? (These are questions that has to be answered, you're asking people to invest in you).

And most importantly, if you yourself are unwilling to invest in your own project (By pushing in money or your own labor) what signals does that send to potential investors ? (as i said a few times now, a developer working without upfront payment is an investor).

Does this sound like a valid course of action?
I'm thinking first, I try to get a team that doesn't require payment up front (This is probably the hardest part)

Before we go on to any hypothetical steps after this step, let's acknowledge that step 1 is not only very difficult -- it's highly unlikely to happen.
If you can do step 1, then sure, the rest of your steps are reasonable. But step 1 is unreasonable.
It's an extremely common fallacy. "All I have to do is promise some people money, get them to believe me, and somehow motivate them to turn out a good result."
I don't know why so many people believe in this false idea.
For it to work, you'd have to be a very good con man.
Are you a very good con man?

Is there a format to follow with a GDD? Or at least an example of one I could use as a template?

[Opens mouth to speak...]

Disregard that, I'm already about 5 pages into the GDD.[/quote]

[Closes mouth.]

Is there a way to show this to people to get opinions without the risk of it being stolen?
[/quote]

This is a legal question that's frequently discussed in the Business/Law forum. In brief: copyright your GDD, and get an NDA signed before showing it. But the foregoing notwithstanding, nobody's going to steal your idea.

If I wanted to start teaching myself game design in my spare time, where would I start, and how would I go about doing that?[/quote]

Read http://sloperama.com/advice/designprep.htm and http://sloperama.com/advice/lesson13.htm