Launching a crowdfunding project for a nonprofit, cause, or charity is an increasingly popular way to not only engage existing donors, but to also discover new ones!
We’ve already covered some of the best practices to raise money for a personal crowdfunding campaign. In this article, we’re going to focus on how to launch a successful crowdfunding project for your nonprofit.
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1. Decide which crowdfunding platform to launch on
There are a lot of “types” of campaigns that you can launch for your nonprofit.
Traditional Crowdfunding: You launch a campaign on an established platform (like one of these) and promote that campaign to your existing donor list and partners. The benefit here being that you may interest new donors on the platform and the platform takes care of all of the functionality needed to run a campaign.
You may decide to launch an “all or nothing” or “keep what you raise” campaign and offer rewards to your supporters. Some platforms, like this one, might also offer perks that you can choose from to offer donors.
Peer to Peer Fundraising: There are platforms out there that offer p2p fundraising functionality, which enables you to give each of your existing donors their own fundraising page so that they can raise money for your nonprofit from their social network.
One of the great things about this type of fundraising is that you don’t have to focus on marketing your campaign as much, because your donors will be doing the marketing for you. However, it’s your job to get them interested in the cause and provide great educational material that will guide them through the process. Of all the interviews we’ve done, I think this nonprofit did an amazing job of providing that kind of info for their online fundraiser.
Self-Hosted Crowdfunding/Fundraising Campaign: Finally, you can host and run a crowdfunding campaign on your own website! This will give you more control over the design of the initiative, how visitors interact with it (like including an email opt-in), and it will let you capture all of their traffic information via google analytics. It will also cost less, as most platforms take a percentage of funds raised.
Of course, it takes a little bit of technical savvy to pull this off and you will need to actively market the project, but the payoff is huge. Rather than interacting with a 3d party website, visitors will be coming to your website.
2. Begin to create educational materials
Education materials are a must, no matter what kind of campaign you run for your nonprofit!
Let’s be honest, not everyone is tech savvy, and even those who are may have never given to an online fundraising website and don’t know that they should share the campaign when it’s out.
It’s important to be thorough when preparing guides to: pledge/donate, share on social media, get involved, etc. Although you will have the opportunity to include some information on your crowdfunding page, I would supplement this with material on your website.
Education materials don’t just need to take the form of “how to contribute” to your campaign, but they also explain more about your cause or initiative. They can highlight why people have decided to give to the project and the compelling reasons why people are involved with the nonprofit.
Although it may seem obvious to you why such and such a cause is important, it may not to others until you explain to them why with compelling stories, videos, or articles which they can discover in their Facebook feed, email inbox, or other social media channels.
The MMORE charity did a killer job of this in their campaign.
I’ve put together a new GUIDE that’s packed with science-backed nonprofit fundraising methods, resources, strategies, and killer marketing methods.
You should check it out if you want to get more donations and you want to fast-track the entire process.
You might disagree, but in my opinion, the nonprofit industry is historically slow to adopt new technologies and instead, organizations stay with tried and true methods, like mailing out brochures to potential donors in a community.
Change is tough, but I’m here to tell you, you can do it! I’ve outlined in my previous post why online giving is exploding and how important it is to get into this new medium. It’s also not as difficult as you might think.
Investing some time to learn how to build up followers on your social media accounts will be well worth it in the future when you have a bunch of interested individuals with whom you can share your new campaign! You can learn more about how to do this on my personal blog. In general, it comes down to sharing interesting or useful content that your followers care about and engaging in community discussions.
Your email list is also a crucial way to share news or initiatives with your donors. If you haven’t already, I would set up an email list with one of these providers and an opt-in form so that you can start to get a list going. We might be in the social networking age, but many individuals still get the majority of the news about organizations they care about from email.
4. Network with organizations and industry publications.
It’s likely that you’ve already been networking with other nonprofit organizations up until this point. That same networking mentality must extend to the online world when you’re running a nonprofit crowdfunding campaign.
Rather than going it alone and trying to market or promote your project on social media, identify other organizations that care about the same mission you do or individuals who care about that cause.
In exchange for promoting their organization and helping bring their work to a broader audience, they may be willing to help introduce your campaign to their audience. Since they and their audience care about the same types of causes as your nonprofit, it’s likely that they will be interested in your campaign.
Along with forming relationships with other organizations that serve the same group of individuals that yours does, it’s also important to reach out to publications that operate in your niche. These could be media companies, bloggers, or publications that are bring awareness the cause you’re trying to raise money for or are in some way connected to that cause.
In this article, I’ve outlined a few different components of a great PR story that I would recommend keeping in mind when you are doing outreach to individuals in the media.
5. Study industry examples
One of the golden rules I have when I’m planning out the marketing of a new initiative is to not re-invent the wheel. More often than not, there are industry examples, case studies, or organizations that have experienced the kind of success you are seeking! You just need to model their actions and dig deep to figure out what it is that really made them successful.
Spend an hour or two on google and seek out successful and unsuccessful nonprofit crowdfunding campaigns. Study how they did their social media marketing, donor communications, and whether or not they’ve gotten on any media publications throughout their fundraiser.
I would recommend creating an excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the campaigns and your takeaways so that you can share them with your team (we would also love to hear any of your insights on our new fundraising podcast).
6. Hustle until the finish line
Finally, don’t give up, even if you’ve had some initial success! This is the number one recurring theme that I’ve seen from speaking with hundreds of campaign creators on our forum, through social media, throughout the podcast, and in person. You can’t give up until you reach the finish line.
I know it’s difficult to motivate yourself at the beginning of this process to create education materials, build up your following online, start an email list, research platforms, network, and more. I promise that you’ll learn more about marketing in this span of time than you ever have before throughout the lifecycle of your nonprofit.
Remember that everything you are doing is for the benefit of the donors you serve and the cause or mission that you are passionate about.
I’ve put together a new GUIDE that’s packed with science-backed nonprofit fundraising methods, resources, strategies, and killer marketing methods.
You should check it out if you want to get more donations and you want to fast-track the entire process.
What nonprofit do you run or work for?
Let me know in a comment below and feel free to link to your website so I can check it out. Also, let me know if this article was helpful!
