Rick Chen, cofounder of Pozible, came along to a Melbourne Campaigner’s Network session to introduce the basics of crowd-funding and how to use the Pozible platform. Here are some of his key points:
Crowdfunding = Presale of rewards.
When a group uses Pozible to raise money they outline what they are seeking money for. They then issue a series of rewards for donations. When the funding target is reached your project receives the money people have pledged and in return you need to provide the rewards.
All or nothing.
People pledge to support a project but if the funding target isn’t reached the money will not be deducted from pledger’s accounts. This means it’s important to…
Be realistic about your target.
How much money do you realistically believe you can raise via crowdfunding? You may need to reduce the costs of your project overall or only use this method for partial revenue towards the project.
Build your audience.
Crowdfunding depends on your own established networks. If it’s early days in building your list and profile you may need to do more of that before embarking on a crowd-funding campaign. Around half of the traffic to Pozible comes via Facebook or Twitter so it’s a method well suited to using social networks. Like any other donor strategy personal relationships and recommendations are highly valuable.
Use what you’ve got!
When coming up with rewards use what you can get your hands on, what you were going to do anyway, or what is a realistic use of time and resources. For example, crowdfunding may be pre-sale of event tickets ie if people pledge $50 they get a ticket to the event and you have a guaranteed crowd. One person who crowdfunded travel overseas then sent pledgers a postcard from the place. Come up with rewards that people will appreciate but won’t be a drain on your resources.
Create Buzz.
Be creative, make it personal, do the unexpected, and connect to trends and current issues to increase the buzz around your crowdfunding campaign. This will increase the likelihood that people will talk about it, share it with their friends, and pledge support.
There’s lots of great tips on the Pozible site. Please note that not all crowdfunding platforms use the ‘all or nothing’ approach.
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