Crowdfunding: Letting A Thousand Flowers Really Bloom/Part Two: LETTING

08 Sep Crowdfunding: Letting A Thousand Flowers Really Bloom/Part Two: LETTING

Crowdfunding: Letting A Thousand Flowers Really Bloom/Part Two: LETTING: Like this crowd of Giant White Shasta Daisies. Image by and uploaded to Flikr by Swallowtail Garden Seeds with a Creative Commons license.

Crowdfunding: Letting A Thousand Flowers Really Bloom/Part Two: LETTING

Once you’ve understood that crowdfunding is part of fundraising, you want to know how to let your crowdfunding flowers bloom.

Think of money as water. Think of fundraising as opening up channels to receive that water. Crowdfunding is just fancy plumbing and a pump.

Your job is to keep the pump primed, and the plumbing unobstructed.

Crowdfunding Magic?

What crowdfunding does that seems so magic is open up a channel right where so many people seem to live, and so many give: online. When you crowdfund, you are going to be inundated. Hopefully, you’ll be inundated with money. For sure you’ll also be inundated with work. There’s a level of excitement you must maintain if you bother to do crowdfunding. It’s part of the job.

Excitement is the pump. Your cause can be best in the world but if your crowdfunding campaign is boring, please just don’t do it at all. Go back to Part One, read the article, and only do the stuff they talk about besides crowdfunding.

Magic Takes Work!

If you are committed to crowdfunding, commit. That’s what we mean by “letting”: let it work for you.

You have to work to let it work for you, though! Nothing in social media stays the same for long. People live online because it distracts them. If you want their attention, be distracting: be engaging, interesting, quirky, even provocative. Above all, be appreciative.

Appreciation is Key

Appreciation is fun for people to read about as well as receive and inspires giving.

If you’re going to crowdfund, you need to budget time to keep up with it. Time to prepare perks in advance, for example. What a great idea! Hey–it came from the folks who wrote the article I advised. (Here’s the article again. It begins downloading when you click on it.) Take time to troubleshoot in advance what they figured out through trial and error (with over 100 years of organizing under their belts) and which they share in the article.

Crowdfunding is a magic wand because you work your butt off creating the magic.

Then you have to make sure people see it!  A beautiful crowdfunding page is like a beautiful website: it just sits there. Yes, some of the magic of crowdfunding is that people do browse looking for things to fund. How cool is that?!

But don’t rely on it!

You have to tell people to come to your campaign! How? On to Part Three.

For an index to the whole series, click here.