I just released a new guide! Check it out here. It’s all about crowdfunding personal expenses. Get Funding for Education,Travel, Volunteering, Emergencies, Bills, and more.
A little over two months have passed since Indiegogo Life was rebranded as Generosity, a free (with a suggested donation) platform for personal fundraising run by Indiegogo.
If you’re thinking of running a personal fundraising project or a non-profit fundraising campaign, you might be interested in Generosity due to its recent popularity.
Let’s explore a few of the elements that both small and largely successful Generosity campaigns have in common, so you can build a strong campaign from the start.
1. A Meaningful Cause
When it comes to personal and cause fundraising, a meaningful cause is essential. Whatever your cause is, make that vision clear on your campaign page, in your promotional materials and in messages that you post on Facebook. Show potential donors the urgent need that their donations can fill.
If your cause doesn’t apply to you or something you know specifically (for instance, if you want to raise money for cancer research or to save an endangered species), your best bet is to raise money for – or in affiliation with – a recognized non-profit. This increases donors’ confidence knowing where their donations are going and helps you raise more!
Otherwise, you’re going to need to underscore just why this cause is so urgent, and how even a small donation can move your funding meter. That leads us into the next point.
2. A Compelling Story
When you are going through a difficult time and need financial assistance, it can be hard to share personal details about yourself for the whole internet to see. But in order to get donations, you need to help your audience understand your situation and show them that you are being genuine and transparent.
Organizers of successful Generosity campaigns make it clear who they are and why they need your help. They share stories about amazing people under terrible circumstances, stories that motivate us to give to those that are less fortunate – or who are going through something similar to what we have experienced before. If you fail to make that kind of connection, it will be a lot harder to reach your goal.
You should expect the majority of your donations to come from your social network and second degree connections. But, having a great story that viewers or readers can empathize with around the world increases the chance that you’ll be featured by the media in a human interest story (here’s some advice on how to do that).
When it comes to raising large amounts of money on a platform like Generosity, the size of your social network plays a huge factor. Luckily, Generosity comes equipped with easy to use social media tools to help get you started. Here are a few examples that show how large social networks can help spread the message about a fundraising campaign:
The Dinner Party, a campaign raising funds for an organization that hosts potluck dinners, retreats and more for adults who have experienced significant loss, has raised over $52K on Generosity in one month.
The campaign organizer, Lennon Flowers, has 1.6K friends of Facebook. The project has 2.4K Facebook shares.
Let’s Give The Gift of a Fresh Start, a campaign looking to raise $100K to help 11 Syrian families who have recently come to America, has raised over $759K from over 18K people in 10 days.
The campaign’s organizer is Humans of New York, a popular website that shares stories about New York City’s inhabitants. They have over 16 million likes on Facebook and the campaign has 10K Facebook shares!
4. Videos and Pictures
You should include video and pictures for any type of crowdfunding campaign.
They can be especially helpful for personal fundraising because it’s another way to reassure donors that the project is real. Unfortunately, the occasional fraud slips through the cracks and uses someone else’s pictures to con people – being successful means showing others that you are legitimate.
It’s your job to re-establish rapport with your friends and build rapport with their friends. The best way to do that is with engaging photos that highlight your situation and draw attention to the positive points of your story.
5. Frequent Updates
Posting regular updates on your campaign page will help get donors more involved. It encourages visitors to share your progress, keep up to date, and it can even lead to media attention.
One campaign that is raising funds on Generosity to build a comprehensive Health Education Program in the community of Playa Gigante, Nicaragua, raised over $14K of their $25K goal in one month (which was reached due to matched donations).
This project is smaller than the others I have mentioned, but the organizer’s frequent positive updates, with pictures, helped push them to their goal.
6. Rewards (But Not Always!)
Supporting a great cause is not all about what you get in return. However, in some cases including rewards in your fundraising project can be beneficial. Form a branding perspective, larger charities can use rewards with their logo to increase brand recognition and awareness. Other personal rewards, like pictures drawn by kids who got help as a result of hospital donations, can be a nice reminder of a project donors were proud to support.
One good example of this is the Generosity campaign, Inspiring Comics Education at SAW in 2016.
This project successfully raised over $5K for The Sequential Artists Workshop, with rewards that included art by student, contest winners, famous artists and more!
You can also raise funds this way
If creating a pitch video, hitting up your friends, and sharing your story is making you anxious or nervous, don’t fret! There are other ways to finance medical bills, unexpected costs, or even refinance your credit card debt.
I’d recommend looking into peer to peer lending platforms, like these, to get a low interest unsecured personal loan. It varies from website to website, but you can usually get upwards of 20-30k.
In case this sounds confusing, we’ve put together a post giving an overview of getting funds through P2P lending. Hope it’s helpful!
Conclusion
From looking at fundraising campaigns that are currently popular on Generosity, you can see how they all have certain things in common. The organizers of these projects are passionate about the causes that they are asking you to help support, and that passion comes through in their efforts and the hard work they do to put together their Generosity page.
To learn more about running a successful online fundraiser, take a look at this CrowdCrux post!
