Nonprofits

How To Set Up Crowdfunding

It’s a simple equation: the more people who know about your crowdfunding campaign, the more funds your organization can raise to help further your mission and fund your project.

Crowdfunding can be strategically promoted across every channel your organization uses, from direct mail to email to social media, and of course, text messaging. Using your organization’s verified mobile numbers you are guaranteed to reach almost every single recipient of your crowdfunding campaign with your fundraising message and call to action.

How to set up crowdfunding for your organization

1. You must begin your Crowdfunding campaign by picking a specific project that has a clear goal that the fundraiser will support.
2. Decide on a fundraiser deadline for your campaign to create a sense of urgency. When an organization needs to raise a certain amount of money by a deadline, supporters tend to step up by donating more to the organization they would have otherwise.
3. Decide on a fundraising goal and establish a budget! When deciding on a goal, an organization must consider how much they need to support their initiatives as well as how much they will need to cover event costs and overhead.

Create compelling content to ensure an engaging campaign

A brief video that is usually 2 to 4 minutes long. It explains what the cause is, why the cause matters, and a short overview of the team members who are on the frontlines dealing with the issue. Campaigns raise 4 times as much when crowdfunding campaigns are promoted by video.

Include pictures of your impact, the beneficiaries, volunteers, and even the board members. The more people that you can involve, the more people it will resonate with. It is helpful to show people smiling and facing the camera in action so that the impact can be tangibly illustrated to the donors.

Text that describes the campaign and gives prospective donors a compelling reason to give. It should explain how funds will be used, how the funds directly impact the organization and, most importantly, why the cause is so important. Word count in the fundraiser description should be 300-500 words. Also be sure to remind them how every little bit can help.

Testimonials that illustrate the positive work done by your organization whether it be from a donor, volunteer, board member or beneficiary. These can be quotes, short videos or anything helping to illustrate impact.

Other things to add to your crowdfunding campaign:

A comments section where supporters can provide feedback. Donate2it provides for comments by donors when they make a donation. The best place to interact with donors and answer questions is Facebook. Doing so provides a natural area for communication. Be sure to create a hashtag for people to search to see the activity. Doing this also provides a way for your supporters to like and repost your updates.

An updates section keeps supporters updated as to project progress and acts as a storytelling device. Donate2it provides an area in the campaign editing section to post updates about the campaign. This area is a great place to thank donors and post updates about the campaign. These updates do not need to be long something as simple as “Thanks to everyone for your support, we have reached 50% of the goal.”

A link to a home page. Linking to a nonprofit organization’s homepage or Facebook page allows for further research and for the donor to engage with the organization.

A donor spotlight, a small section devoted to celebrating a specific donor. This encourages donors to share the page with their social network as well as increases engagement by giving the donor a sense of belonging. The best place to give a shoutout to specific donors is in the Updates section of the campaign page.

Social media posting is a great way to get the word out but be careful. The “Spray and Pray” approach does not work. Like every other fundraising activity posting and promoting a campaign takes planning. Think about your message and make your Tweets and Post about that. Links to your fundraiser are great and should be included of course but people donate to support the mission not the fundraiser. Use social media to educate and to promote personal engagement with supporters.

Show Impact:

Reinforce what every dollar donated will accomplish and how each fundraiser is making an impact to advance your mission. You can do this by posting updates, and engaging through social media, text or email messaging.

Convey Your Reputation:

Recently, fake causes have been illuminated in the news, especially in regards to crowdfunding sites. Illustrating an organization’s 501(c)(3) status and past work helps alleviate the worry of the donor. Linking to a home page and the organizations active social media pages helps tremendously to reduce the “Is this a legitimate fundraiser?” worry.