Nonprofits today want to know what is nonprofit crowdfunding. Rather than motivating people to simply donate, fundraisers are moving toward a crowd source approach or crowdfunding.
What Is Nonprofit Crowdfunding
Crowdfunding leverages your existing audience to raise money on your behalf. It’s like social media on steroids. Nonprofit crowdfunding success increases donations organically by getting supporters to rally for your cause.
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Before you embark on your crowdfunding journey, you must start with a measurable goal. Like for-profit marketing, setting realistic goals are key to determining the value of your crowdfunding campaign. This is where you need to find a balance between what is within reach and what is unrealistic.
5 best practices for nonprofit crowdfunding success
- Set a measurable goal. Those people who have done this before can ask themselves questions like:
- How much have we raised in the past?
- What was the average amount raised?
- What is the average donation amount online?
First-timers can ask themselves:
- How much do I need to make an impact?
- How much does the product/service I want to create cost?
- How much did similar campaigns raise?
- Rethink rewards and donation tiers. Rewards are items, recognition or service that donors get for contributing. These are the incentives used to motivate people to support a campaign. But, contrary to what you might think, giving rewards can sometimes backfire. Think about how connecting the reward to your cause can make it more meaningful. For example, if your mission is to get sponsors for a child’s education, have the child write a letter or draw a picture of thanks.
- Tell an extraordinary story. Emotional, compelling stories get results. Here are 4 story prompts to get the creative juices going:
- The story of overcoming adversity.
- The rags to riches story.
- The quest journey where the protagonist encounters obstacles along the way.
- The tragic story that focuses on the negative to tell the story of how tragedy was overcome with generosity.
- Build a tribe of followers. If you simply build a crowdfunding webpage, they won’t come. You must cultivate your following. Take your very best list of around 100 people and categorize them into three types:
- Promoter – those that will help you spread your message.
- Fundraisers – this is where peer-to-peer fundraising comes in. They will create mini-crowdfunding campaigns through their own person fundraising pages.
- Donors – These are the people that contribute to your campaign.
- Publicity. Whether to invest in PR depends on a few things such as finding the right journalists, having a newsworthy campaign and whether you campaign can generate substantial donations. You need to have the right audience to attract funding. If you choose to get publicity for your campaign, here are some steps you can follow:
- Target – Use powerful searches like Twitter to find journalists who have an interest in your cause.
- Prepare – Ask yourself why your campaign is newsworthy?
- Pitch – Contact the journalists that you found and tell them your story and let them know about your campaign.
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Bottom Line
Creating a crowdfunding campaign can be easy, but getting the results you would like is a challenge. If you follow some or all of these best practices, you will be on the road to building a peer-to-peer network that will spread the word about your mission and increase your chances for nonprofit crowdfunding success.
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