Do you work with a nonprofit organization? Have you thought about crowdfunding for special projects? Does the time you would put into learning about it or building the board’s confidence in it seem too time-consuming?
From a distance, crowdfunding looks as though it could solve numerous challenges for nonprofits. But looking at it more closely, would the time and effort spent in learning and managing this system outweigh the funds gained?
Over the past year, I worked with a client on a crowd-funding campaign and realized that, aside from the success of the campaign, I learned that crowdfunding is a double-win for nonprofits.
Why? Because, aside from donations, a community nonprofit gains significantly from a crowdfunding portal’s technical team. At least, this was our experience with FundRazr.
How does this work? From the very start, the provider we worked with, FundRazr, included collaboration with a technical team that supported the campaign’s progress, advised on maximizing site use and expanding the campaign to social media.
The inherent success principle for crowdfunding providers is that, if the client does well, so do they. Thus, they build a platform that solidly supports you, the client. For the five percent that FundRazr charged, we gained an expanded professional virtual team. If we had contracted this work, the campaign wouldn’t have been feasible. The very idea of having an adjunct fundraising team opens up new possibilities for nonprofits.
If you want to read more about this campaign see my article on the Self Counsel Press Int. site.
