I was asked to write a guest blog post for FundChange, which is a Canadian community-based charity network. They are exploring how crowdfunding can help get useful community projects funded. So I was asked to offer any advice I had learned about what to get ready BEFORE you begin your project, and here is what I came up with. You can also find the post on their blog.
First off, an introduction…
My name is Christopher Postill. I am a 26 year old content producer / new media designer from Canada. My work primarily consists of web & sound design for freelance clients; I’ve done work with everyone from small start-up not for profits to big businesses like CSI and YTV. Personally, I am a DIY enthusiast, so I do really enjoy working from the ground up on a shoestring budget (which is what initially attracted me to the idea of crowdfunding). My off-the-clock time consists of doing much the same work, creative multimedia, but for my own passion projects.
In the past two months I’ve set up crowd-funding campaigns for three of my own projects in hopes of figuring out what does and doesn’t work. In doing this, I’ve had one phenomenal success, one mediocre success and a complete and utter failure that fell directly on its face… The truth is, the utter failure was the project that I was sure was the most accessible, the most innovative and hands down the best suited for crowdfunding. In hindsight, I’ve learned some of the reasons it didn’t work, most of which were problems before I had even begun the campaign. So, from a guy who really does love the ideals of crowdfunding, but has had both inspiring and discouraging results, here are some things to keep in mind BEFORE your campaign even goes live.
Think It Through & Talk To Lots Of People Who Haven’t
My biggest fumble starting out was not defining my project well enough. Whatever it is you are raising funds for, you need to have considered EVERYTHING before you ask people for their hard-earned money. If people get the impression that there is any uncertainty in your campaign, they won’t feel confident about where their contribution is going. With my big blunder, I revised my pitch 4 separate times while it was live, which, was obviously a huge mistake. Repeat visitors were just getting confused about what I was trying to accomplish.
Before you start your campaign, define your project fully, make it simple, easily digestible, cut out all the clutter and run it by your colleagues. You need to be sure what you are doing is valuable to others as well as incredibly clearly defined. Give the campaign a strong identity of its own and ‘brand’ it accordingly.
Make sure you have a 1 paragraph pitch that makes people really want to be involved. If you can’t honestly say you’d give $5 to the project when that paragraph randomly showed up in your own Facebook newsfeed, keep rewriting it until you can. My approach was to be personal about it. Don’t make it sound like a TV commercial, make it sound more like a status update; include your personal narrative as a part of your marketing and it will make it a little more fun, identifiable and easy to get behind.
Be Modest With Your Pitch & Your Funding Goals
I think a big misunderstanding is that as soon as you coin a fancy term and talk about ‘crowdfunding’ all over social media, it changes the bottom line. It doesn’t. The bottom line is that you are asking people for their money to help your cause. It’s the same as it ever was, you are fundraising. All that has changed is a slight cultural shift where, because technology is making it easy, more and more people are OK with the idea of giving little bits to all the projects they find valuable. Be reasonable about what your charity needs, be clear what you need it for and be modest about asking for it. Offer truly valuable incentives, work for the money and be grateful when it comes in. That’s all common sense, but I think (and I am certainly guilty of this when I first started) it is easy to wrongfully assume that this crowdfunding phenomenon is magically making anonymous people richer and more generous.
Just be realistic about the whole thing and don’t expect any anonymous benefactors to hand you their fortune. The beauty of crowdfunding is that it gives power back to the crowd; you have to be transparent, honest and thankful to every individual who joins the crowd behind your campaign.
Make a detailed rollout plan for everyone involved
A lot of blog posts I’ve read about crowdfunding emphasize the importance of maintaining your project once it is live. I agree with that wholeheartedly, a lot of people need a few separate exposures to your campaign before they will actually consider contributing (or even clicking the link to get the full story). However, no matter how good the cause, there is nothing worse than getting the exact same damned tweet EVERY SINGLE DAY from the same person saying “Please help me raise funds!” The message just gets lost and becomes spam.
You need to be clever about how you can expose people to your project in different ways, and then you need to time those exposures right. My successful campaigns had a new Youtube video once a week that I’d post to all my social networks. I did guest blogs (like this), interviewed people who were doing interesting things related to my project, etc. These were ways of talking about the project/charity/etc. without saying the same thing over and over. Before you go live, make at least a rough plan as to how you are going to expose people to your project multiple times, but give them something new each time you do it. If you have a team, even better, just make sure everyone is on the same page and you’ve all given a little thought to how you’ll engage people. Also, Kissmetrics made some fancy infographics that help explain the peak times to post to Facebook/Twitter/Email/etc. You can find them here http://blog.kissmetrics.com/science-of-social-timing-1/ .
There are 3 pointers I learned the hard way, by bumbling around and incessantly bothering my friends/families/social networks for support. I apologize if I’ve just spun common sense into a 3 page blog post, but my point is…. If you keep clever AND you have a good cause/idea AND you think it all through before diving in, crowdfunding is a brilliant way to raise some money for your charity.
If you want to chat with me about anything more specific or just find out more about what I do, please check out www.chrispostill.com . All the best with all of your campaigns!
Christopher
