How to Crowdfund Your Project?
Written by: Christina Poulton
Approximate read time: 5 minutes
If you don’t happen to know any millionaires who could donate some spare change, crowdfunding can be a way to generate income for your project and spread the word about it at the same time.
It can be really effective for creative activity which doesn’t fit the usual funding criteria, but it does take some planning and work to make it happen. There’s a misconception that you can stick a project on Kickstarter and random people on the internet will fund it for you.
While you may occasionally get some donations from someone in Seattle who just happened to come across your page, the vast majority of your pledges will come from people that you put the campaign in front of. Here are some tips to make it happen.
Get familiar with how crowdfunding works
People who donate to crowdfunding campaigns are statistically more likely to be successful when they run their own because it gives you a good understanding of how it works. Spend some time before you start your own campaign getting to know different platforms and how they operate.
Kickstarter, Crowdfunder and Indiegogo are popular for creative projects but there are others. All charge you for using the platform (often 5% of money raised plus a % on each transaction). Which platform you choose isn’t going to make or break your campaign, in lots of ways they’re all very similar and if you’re not sure, they all have articles about why they’re the best! To improve your crowdfunding knowledge you could:
Back a few projects: You can often back projects from as little as £1. See what the experience is like from a supporter’s point of view. What draws you to a campaign? Did you feel thanked and appreciated? Did they keep you updated? What rewards interested you?
Read the platform guides: all of the big crowdfunding platforms have an amazing selection of specialist guides- everything from effective tools for telling your story, through to setting your target and because crowdfunding happens online they have a wealth of data about what works
Understand your choices: you’ll need to decide between running an all-or-nothing campaign (where if you don’t hit your target you don’t get any of the donations pledged) or flexible funding (where you get whatever you raise by the end of the campaign.)
All-or-nothing campaigns are riskier but the average donation is usually higher and there’s an extra incentive for people to support. You will also need to make choices about your fundraising target amount and how long to run the campaign for. Again the platforms have lots of data on what works and why.
Crowdbuilding before crowdfunding
Way before you launch your campaign start thinking about who your crowd might be. The most common pledges made are £20-£40, so as a rough estimate if you want to raise £2,000 you might need 100 people willing to put down cash. Get your friends and family on board and create a list of where your crowd might come from. Work outwards, starting with those involved in the project or who already support your work in some way. You want to focus your energy on people who already have some connection to you as they’re more likely to donate. This can be personal or professional. Crowdbuilding could come from:
Increasing your mailing list
Developing your social media following through a content plan
Identifying relevant (in your niche and/or local) influencers
Press about your work
Joining online communities or in person networking events
Venues, partners and support organisations
Well connected colleagues who could email people on your behalf
Networks you have access to through work, university, previous projects, social groups, hobbies etc
Don’t skip over this stage or leave it until your campaign is live. It’s vital to the success of your campaign you have your potential donors lined up ready to go before launch day.
Plan your promotion
You need to allow time before and during the campaign to promote your crowdfunder. By this stage you should know who your potential crowd are and you need to be telling them about it, repeatedly. Very few people will donate the first time you email or they see it on social. You’ll need to be persistent and shameless! Don’t be afraid to make direct asks.
Successful campaigns raise a decent chunk of their target when they launch. People like to back a winner and seeing the donation total at £0 doesn’t encourage anyone.The data says if you do well on day 1 you are much more likely to succeed- many guides recommend aiming for 30% of your target within the first 48 hours but this isn’t a hard and fast rule. Ways to make those first days count:
Choose your launch day wisely. A day when people are on email and social and when you have lots of time to dedicate to promoting it
Have your nearest and dearest on standby and ready to pledge the minute it goes live. Get those first donations showing by the time your wider crowd starts looking at it.
Schedule your promotion e.g. have emails to your mailing list ready to go so you can hit send the minute it’s live. Ditto social content. At this stage these should be a reminder not the first they’re hearing about it.
Let your crowd know to look out for the campaign and hype them up for launch day. Then once it goes live they’re ready to act
Plan your promotion across the campaign, including a few ‘pushes’. Most donations come in at the start and the end so create some key moments during the campaign to keep the momentum up. Thank existing backers and ask them to share your campaign and encourage other people to donate. Keep them updated- they can be great advocates for you.
If you have some great rewards available you can use this as part of your promotion. With arts campaigns however, this is usually less of a feature than for product campaigns. It might be a nice bonus but people will be backing your campaign because they want to support you or because they want to see the project happen. It’s rare that someone will pledge because they really want a branded canvas bag or a signed photo. Think about things that don’t add costs to produce and send, but which make people feel special and appreciated- their name on a wall, a personalised thank you song, or a character named after them.
Whether your promotional content is talking about the rewards for backers or telling the story of the project and why it’s so important that it happens, make sure to include yourself. People give money to people, not concepts, and you’re the face of this campaign. A video making a direct ask from the heart, filmed on your phone, is more effective than a slick, edited masterpiece set to music that doesn’t include anyone’s face.
Whether you’re raising £500 or £5000 the principles of understanding the crowdfunding world, building your crowd and then telling everyone about it should set you on the right track. Crowdfunding is not one where you can sit back and cross your fingers- be completely shameless, tell everyone you ever met 20 times and then tell them again until you hit that target.
Good luck with your campaign!