Crowdfunding offers an exciting way to fundraise

Donations for a digital age

Crowdfunding is one of the most exciting new developments in fundraising. It is a close relative to the more familiar donation-based campaigns that have been run by charities for years, but there are several very important differences.

Any kind of organisation including for-profit businesses and individuals can run a successful crowdfunding campaign. In this, it is perhaps the only form of fundraising where your legal structure has minimal impact.
If you have a great idea that needs additional funding, this could potentially form the basis of an effective crowdfunding campaign.
Its been used effectively to help sick children fund treatment, support new business start-ups, develop innovative new products and assist charities and not-for-profit organisations deliver vital services to the community.
Crowdfunding relies on leveraging the power of the digital world to huge numbers of people and encourage them to support your project.

41-Crowdfunding.mp4 Building your campaign

Navigating the big decisions

On the surface running a crowdfunding campaign seems relatively straightforward, and indeed anyone can launch a campaign. But many campaigns fail or delivery lackluster results because the people behind them don’t understand how to design, implement, market and promote a campaign.

When building a campaign there are several significant decisions that we will help you navigate, these include:

Which of the many crowdfunding platforms available should you use? Each of these has individual pros and cons and it's common for different projects to suit a specific platform.

How are you going to design your campaign, what's your core message and who is ‘your crowd’ (your anticipated supporters)?

What kind of crowdfunding do you want to run, do you want to set your project up as an ‘all or nothing’ or ‘take what you raise’ campaign. Are you going to simply seek donations, offer a product or rewards, or offer equity to supporters of your campaign?

What's your marketing strategy, key message and call to action?

How long should you run your campaign for?

What does a successful campaign look like and how should that influence how a new campaign is designed?

Costs

Compared to other forms of fundraising, Crowdfunding requires a slightly larger initial investment as in almost every case it is necessary to create a new campaign video or re-edit existing footage. Additionally, campaigns almost always benefit from expenditure on marketing including paid-for social media adverts.

Wider benefits

As well as a way to generate significant sums of unrestricted funding, crowdfunding campaigns typically also bring other benefits, not least a huge boost to a project or organisations profile. This is because it is essential to put considerable effort into both marketing and PR activity to maximise the success of a project. Where ever possible we also recommend that you have built as large as possible following across multiple social media platforms before embarking on a crowdfunding campaign.

Working with us

At Heaward Solutions, we understand how to make Crowdfunding work and can help you to unlock its huge potential. We are also able to assemble a dream team of specialists to support your project including graphic designers, videographers and digital marketing specialists.

Provided people will care about it, then it doesn’t matter how niche you think your project is. Recently we supported a social business to run a successful campaign to secure extra funding to help them reach more schools with a unique Roman Catholic Religion, Sex and Health education curriculum they had developed. Not only did this raise valuable funds from supporters worldwide but it also resulted in extensive media exposure and enquires from across the globe about using their product.

Laurence Tunnicliffe face from Panda Press Stone Customer Feedback

Laurence Tunnicliffe - Panda Press Stone

" I've worked with Andrew on a recent fundraising project that has both generated significant income and raised awareness in our chosen market place. The resulting raised profile within our sector has meant that we are now experiencing far more inbound calls from the education sector with potential clients both wanting to talk to us and wanting to place orders. I can not praise Andrew and his team highly enough. "

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