I love polling members on our forum to reveal insights about crowdfunding, Kickstarter, and creativity.
In my last poll, I asked, “How did you hear about Kickstarter or Crowdfunding?”
I got back a lot of replies. 68 in total! Although this is a very small sample size in the world of statistics, I thought it would be interesting to put together a chart and share the findings! You can click the chart below to enlarge it.
According to members surveyed on our forum, the MAJORITY of creators find out about Kickstarter or crowdfunding from seeing or hearing about popular projects. They then get interested about this whole new fundraising medium and want to learn more.
But, a close runner up is creators finding out about the crowdfunding platform from their friends or coworkers and following that, the news.
Here are all of the data points and their corresponding percentages:
- Popular project (27.94%)
- A friend or coworker (25%)
- The news (20.59%)
- A social networking site (10.29%)
- Research (7.35%)
- School (4.41%)
- Seeing an advertisement (2.94%)
- TV (1.47%)
Obviously, there is a little bit of cross over here. For instance, you can learn about a popular project via the news or a friend or coworker. I primarily broke it down by the words the individual creator used to describe how they found out about Kickstarter and crowdfunding. If they referenced a specific popular project that drew their attention, I would assign it to that category. If they mentioned a specific media publication where they learned about Kickstarter, I’d assign it to the news category.
Here are some of the awesome responses I got from amazing users on the forum.
Also, not all of the members could remember where they first heard about Kickstarter. It’s become much more mainstream since the early days!
My thoughts on the findings
I was quite honestly surprised that so few readers had discovered Kickstarter from researching ways to fund a creative project. But, as I thought more about it, it makes sense.
Before Kickstarter, there wasn’t really any unique way to fund a creative, technical, or design-oriented project. You were just expected to raise private funds, get a loan, or have money saved up for your hobby or business endeavor.
It’s only after an individual discovers that there are other entrepreneurs or creative types like them that are funding projects this way that they’ll then get interested.
This leads me to the conclusion that the best way to spread the message that crowdfunding is a viable way to finance a new creative project is to highlight successes in the industry.
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing with my podcast, where I breakdown where campaigns go their pledges and backers. In addition, the reason I started the forum in the first place was for creators to share what’s working for them and for ideas to cross-pollinate.
To be honest, I was quite disappointed that more schools aren’t teaching their students in business and creative classes that crowdfunding is a way to jumpstart a new venture.
I recently received an email from a reader saying that her university (very prestigious, I won’t say which) doesn’t put enough emphasis on how to use crowdfunding to raise money for film productions. They basically say to just put a campaign up and see what happens.
I think that MUCH more needs to be done in this area on the front of educating students about new ways to go about achieving their goals. (Feel free to email me if you’d like to connect on this).
I hope this poll has been interesting and useful! Good luck on your campaign!
