Crowdfunding is a very successful method of gaining funding. These are some crowdfunding tips for nonprofits that are incredibly useful to know because as a nonprofit the way you go about crowdfunding is slightly different to that of profit earning organisations.
Below are a couple tips that could help your campaign:
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 1 – Personal network
When crowdfunding, one of the most important things is getting off the 0 mark. A crowdfunding tip for nonprofits, as well as profit earning campaigns, is to first go to your personal network for backing and/or promotion. It’s easier to get in contact and persuade your personal network to back the cause. If they donate on the first day, then it’s easier to get the masses to follow suit, as the masses tend to jump on bandwagons rather than take the lead.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 2 – Offline
A fantastic crowdfunding tip for nonprofits is to try and gain personal networks through offline events, for example, events and meetups etc.
You’re able to find people who truly believe in the cause that you’re raising money for, which is great for promotion of your crowdfunding campaign. Gaining an offline personal network can help provide the starting push for your campaign. Once you have that start off funding it helps convince other people to also donate to the cause.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 3 – Platform
As a nonprofit organisation, you would be opting for donation-based crowdfunding platforms. These platforms are best suited for crowdfunding for nonprofits as they often offer gift aids to increase the amount you can raise or they allow you to raise for as long as you need to, to reach your crowdfunding goal. The crowdfunding platform usually opted for by nonprofits are JustGiving or GoFundMe.
An example of a campaign that used GoFundMe was the JamBus campaign featuring Ed Sheeran (video by Drop Studio).
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 4 – Community
Some crowdfunding sites, as well as helping you raise the necessary funds for your cause, can often be good for gaining a community of followers. Certain platforms such as Kickstarter are great for creating communities, as many of the people who have donated to any of the projects on the platform are still actively involved. Having this community is good for spreading the word about your project, as these individuals can spread it to their personal networks and leading it to have a snowball effect.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 5 – Storytelling
An advisable crowdfunding tip for nonprofits is to ensure that they tell the viewers the story. People find it easier and are able to resonate to well-told stories. Well crafted stories tend to stay in the mind of users, which is great because if they don’t donate at the time they first saw it, the story may replay in their head and they may decide to donate at a later stage.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 6 – Social media
Having a social media presence is one of our top crowdfunding tips for nonprofits as it can deliver the news that you’re carrying out a crowdfunding campaign to potential backers. It’s important that you either already have a presence, or you create social media accounts and begin trying to gain a presence on the social media platforms. It allows you to reach potential donors outside of your personal network. You’re able to be more noticed by people of influence, who you may not have thought of, who are willing to back or promote the campaign.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: 7 – Rewards
As a nonprofit organisation, you can’t really be dishing out money as a reward to those who donate to your cause. So, a crowdfunding tip for non-profit organisations is rewarding the backers with merchandise, that could come as one item, for example, a hat or little thank you packages that contain things such as thank you cards, pens, stickers etc.
Those people that donate to the cause may be interested in the cause to the point where a good reward would be inviting them to events where you talk about the cause or fundraise for the cause at. If you need help coming up with a reward try looking at another non-profit crowdfunding campaign for an idea of how it could look.
Crowdfunding Tips For Nonprofits: Conclusion
To conclude, crowdfunding can serve as a very good source to raise funds for a cause. There are a number of key things you need to keep in mind as a non-profit when carrying out crowdfunding campaign. As a non-profit using your status as non-profit is very important in gaining funding. You are able to find people to back and donate to your cause through offline events and social media, that may have not necessarily been in your personal network. Also as you are a non-profit organisation the rewards that you offer wouldn’t be monetary and rather be potential merchandise that backers would be happy with (could also help promote your brand).
Do you need personal advice on how to create your nonprofit crowdfunding campaign?
We can help. Drop The Crowdfunding Studio are proud partners of Crowdcube and Indiegogo. We assist ambitious businesses in communicating their ideas, products and services with outstanding crowdfunding video production, campaign design, crowdfunding marketing and crowdfunding PR.
To learn more about us and our services, visit our website: drop.studio
Or book a free phone workshop today and ask us anything, like how to create a successful crowdfunding campaign or how to accelerate your business from zero to fully funded.