How to create a successful crowdfunding campaign
(p.s.: você pode encontrar uma versão em português desse artigo aqui)
Twenty days was the time that separated my acceptance letter’s arrival from the public announcement of my crowdfunding campaign. As you can imagine, those were days of endless tension and anxiety; when a dream is close to becoming reality, and you start seeing the possibility of it melting through your fingers, there’s no way of keeping calm. Still, this is the struggle several international students face when they’re accepted in American universities without all the financial aid they need — just like me.
Not knowing how I would afford my flight tickets to the US and other initial expenses, I decided I would try to raise funds online. Since then, my campaign achieved its goal, I helped other students achieve theirs too, and now I decided to write the insights I’ve learned and share them with the world.
If you’re looking for funds to study abroad, just like I was, I hope this article becomes a one-way ticket to your success. And in case you’re fundraising for any other reason, I hope this helps you achieve your goals!
Before we begin…
Throughout the text, I'm constantly going to mention the campaign I did and the video I published on Instagram. Both are originally in Portuguese, but I'm going to translate everything you need to know to English, so don't worry.
Remember your crowdfunding campaign is… a campaign
And as such, it needs to be carefully planned, or your odds of success may decrease drastically. There's no secret: in order to master how to do crowdfundings, you must study. This was one of the first lessons I learned while I was preparing mine, thanks to the advice of my friend (and crowdfunding expert) Bruna Monteiro.
Taking into consideration how long it will last, who's your target audience, what's your schedule from beginning to end, which channels you are using for advertising, if you're hiring a person to help you or not… All of that makes a difference, and you can learn in-depth about it by studying. Sources such as this one, this one, and this one may give you a good perspective. Enjoy the reading!
1) Creating your value proposition
Start with "why"
While creating your campaign, make sure to establish, right at the beginning, what your value proposition is. This means telling everyone why you're there and why should anyone help you.
Remember that, from the moment your campaign becomes public, it will be competing for users' attention with every other content on the internet. If you don't make your users interested in the first 10 seconds, the odds are they will simply roll the feed down to the next post without even getting to know your story.
When I did my crowdfunding, I handled this problem by stating the purpose of my campaign in the opening phrase of the video: "I've been accepted to one of the most competitive universities in the US and now I'm only 3800 dollars away from my dream of studying abroad". That was it. In 10 seconds, I made it clear why I was there AND also sparked a feeling of curiosity in the people watching.
Quantify
As you tell your story, make sure to demonstrate the impact of the things you’ve done. Bring up numbers that can help your audience understand how hard or important your accomplishments were. Did you have a local, regional or national impact? Were you competing with people from your school, your city of the entire country? What is the acceptance rate of the programs you’ve participated in? If you’ve led an initiative, how many people benefitted from it?
Right at the beginning of my video, I told people “Minerva not only was the most competitive university in the US but also one of the most competitive on the planet”. That way, any person who watches it can understand the magnitude of this acceptance. I could have also told, throughout the text I wrote for the campaign’s website, the acceptance rate of programs I participated in and the impact of projects I led, for example. Numbers like those are great for giving donors a perspective of your story and showing them your potential.
Create a feeling of urgency
Demonstrate, in your communication, how far you've gone and how close you are to reach your goal. People tend to help more when they feel the objective is close, just like they get demotivated if they have the impression that the target is unreachable.
In my campaign, I told I had already taken care of the hardest thing (getting accepted) and promised I would solve future challenges too. With that, I only left a single problem unsolved: traveling to the US. And it was around this problem that the entire campaign was built. When people saw there was only one last barrier left, they felt compelled to give me the help I needed.
2) Structuring your campaign
Return the favor
When your campaign goes public, several people will volunteer to help you. Most of them will do so motivated by empathy, and because they believe in your potential, but if there’s a way of giving something back (and raise an extra amount of funds), why not doing so? Think about how you can generate value to society, or at least how you can thank the people who are donating for you. If you’re an artistically talented person, you can do a painting, for example, for the people who donate a certain amount of money, and make small prizes available for different levels of contribution.
One person I know who did this incredibly well was Analu Orleans. She was accepted for an innovation and entrepreneurship program at Stanford and, to afford her trip, did crowdfunding too. However, Analu volunteered to provided free consultancy for five NGOs when she returned, and also offered different prizes for donors, focusing on ways of sharing the knowledge she would acquire at Stanford, such as classes, written guides, and more. The result? The campaign was a tremendous success.
Show yourself!
Instead of simply writing a few paragraphs, record a nice video and give the world a chance to hear your story from you. Besides being easy to share, videos also tend to give your campaign more visibility as they are easier for people to consume. They also foster a sense of trust in donors; any concerns of the campaign being a scam fade away as they see a real person explaining what's it all about.
I had no idea how important a video would be, but it was the main reason why my campaign went viral. In the end, it had more than 100,000 views, and most of them happened the same way: people sharing with other people. The fact that I posted the video on IGTV, besides YouTube, was also great: every time someone shared my video in their Instagram stories, its initial 15 seconds automatically started playing, and that was all the time I needed to tell my value proposition (can you see how relevant it is for you to begin with "why"?)
Create alternative donation channels
Your campaign will probably be hosted on a crowdfunding-specific website, but donating through them requires a certain effort due to the bureaucracy. Whenever you can, create alternative donation channels, giving people more options and flexibility so that they can help you. The more options you have, the fewer barriers are left, and the fewer barriers, the better.
Besides donating through my campaign's website, I also gave people the option of donating through virtual money transfer and depositing in my account. I also left my phone and email so that any potential donor could reach me if necessary. Additionally, bank billing was an option too. At first, I didn't expect it, but all options were used by donors. Don't make the mistake of ignoring this!
3) Launching your campaign
Friends, family, and fans
Before making your campaign public, send it first to your closest friend circle. People close to you will be compelled to donate because of a personal connection and will do so independently of the stage in which your campaign is at. On the other hand, people who don't know you will likely behave in a different manner: they tend to donate when other people have previously donated, and might even give up if they realize they're going to be the first ones. Sending your campaign to your closest friends before publicly launching it raises a few initial donations that, besides helping you achieve your goal, also motivate potential donors you don't know yet.
Before launching my campaign, I shared it with my closest friends twice: first, I sent it to a few people who gave me feedback and helped me enhance it. Then I sent it to a small group of friends and relatives that had been supporting me since the first moment I started working on my application. Those were the first donors, and they laid the foundations for other people to donate.
Campaign godfathers and godmothers
Your inner circle of friends may have a fundamental role in the first donations, but their help can go further. If you can, ask some friends/relatives to convince other people to donate, besides donating themselves. People who believe in your potential and may live your cause, rather than just support it.
The person who shared this tip with me was Katarina Klitzke, a Computer Engineering major student at Georgia Tech who also did a crowdfunding campaign in order to be able to study abroad. Before launching it, she talked to a few close friends and relatives who agreed to help her convince new donors. This way, besides traditional visibility on social media, her campaign could also count with people who were strategically working to get donors.
Spreading the word
List all possibilities you have of providing your campaign exposure and, since the beginning of it, focus on the most promising ones. To bring attention to your story, will you ask your teachers/professors for help? Will you do workshops and advertise during them? Will you speak to someone who works on the local radio? What about the newspaper, is there any chance of getting your story published?
When I did my campaign, this was something I failed to plan. Luckily, however, my closest friends and relatives dedicated themselves to spreading the word, and they made my story reach the newspapers. That's how the article in Folha de Pernambuco, a state-wide newspaper, came to life, and then one at Diário de Pernambuco, another state-wide newspaper, followed it.
Sponsors
Consider getting in touch with organizations that may sponsor you, such as local companies, foundations, and even the government. Even if they don't make you a donation, you can get publicity and networking instead (a person who can't directly help you may introduce you to another one who can, for example).
In a nutshell…
Crowdfunding campaigns are a powerful tool and, when properly planned and executed, may give you all the help you need, but their potential goes far beyond.
In the end, crowdfunding is not just about campaigns, but also about dreams that are shared and carried out together. Its success is a direct result that comes from the effort of innumerous people that, feeling inspired or represented by your story, give that dream of yours a small push so that it can be brought to reality.
That's why there are three things I hope you don't stop:
- dreaming;
- sharing your dreams with the world;
- and supporting other dreamers too.
Good luck with your campaign ;)
