Your all-in-one guide to fundraising success
Follow FundRazr’s easy process for creating and promoting effective fundraising campaigns.
Reach your crowd, build some buzz and achieve your goal with our success guide
Define what success is for you
Success isn’t always as straightforward as “get money.” Every campaign has an individual purpose, and understanding your campaign’s purpose sets a strong foundation for the rest of your crowdfunding journey.
Customizing your theme replaces FundRazr’s logo in the header and lets you change the header colour and font to match your website’s branding. You may also customize your campaign fonts, button colours, add navigation links, and more.
Your campaign’s success may be defined as:
- To raise enough funds to complete a project;
- To raise as much money as possible to help fund a specific need;
- To increase your current support network for a future project;
- To recruit additional fundraisers for a cause;
- To encourage sharing of a particular story to raise awareness and interest.
Craft an effective campaign and story
Successful campaigns require careful consideration of these key actions from your end:
Estimate an achievable monetary goal in a realistic timeline
Look at your current network of friends, family, colleagues, online social accounts, and anywhere else you plan to promote this campaign.
The average contribution on FundRazr is $100 USD, and the average conversion rate is 5% (meaning for every 100 visitors to a campaign, approximately 5 with actually put money toward it). These are approximations; however, they are great guidelines to ensure you have the audience in place to fund this campaign or the appropriate promotional plan to gain this audience (See STEP 3).
Consider a deadline (mandatory for all-or-nothing campaigns) to create a sense of urgency. Check out our “Psychology and Crowdfunding” article for details on this crucial step.
Develop an emotional storytelling focused on impact
Whether you’re requesting funds or recruiting fundraisers to help you raise funds, supporters today want details on the impact they’ll have and, subconsciously, that little boost of the good feeling they receive knowing they’ve helped. To communicate this effectively in your campaign story, we suggest these guidelines:
- A catching first line to draw people in and put them in an agreeable frame of mind.
- Clearly state the problem you or the beneficiary is having.
- Outline your solution to this problem. This is the ‘bigger picture’… we’ll tackle details in the next step.
- Identify the gap between the problem and solution by highlighting the specific ways you’ll use the funds raised to bring your solution to the problem.
- Help your supporters understand the value of their contribution by describing some ‘units of impact.’ What do different funding levels bring to your solution?
- Let your supporters know you’ll update them on your progress even after the campaign is finished, assuring them they’ll see their impact in action.
- Finally, end with two calls to action: donate and share. Success in crowdfunding comes with your supporters sharing to their networks as well!
Include lots of images…
Pictures convey emotion far better than words alone. Populate your story and media gallery with pictures that are:
- High quality (not fuzzy or over/underexposed)
- Yours (not stock images)
- Relevant and shows the beneficiary
- Not extremely distressing to look at
…and a video!
A simple, 1-2 minute video (from your mobile device using a free app is just fine!) of someone speaking about and/or showing the main story elements will ensure more people understand your story, as not everyone will take the time to read it.
For comprehensive help with setting up your campaign, including worksheets and actionable, practical advice:
Share, Promote & Generate Support
Promotion is the key to success!
There is not a crowd waiting with credit cards in hand for new campaigns to fund. A common misconception is the ‘create it and they will come’ idea, and too many campaigns fail simply because no one ever shared them.
Follow these steps to bring your campaign to the world – known and strangers alike:
Prep your ‘first tier’ crowd.
Your ‘first tier’ are those people you’re deeply connected with, such as an existing community of donors, loyal followers, close friends, and family (hi, Mom!).
The goal here is to raise as many funds as possible on the first day your campaign launches. Nobody wants to be the first contributor on a campaign for somebody they aren’t too familiar with. And humans are known for being more likely to do something when they see others doing it first. So for maximum benefit on day one, import each person you consider ‘tier one’ onto your campaign’s email list and they’ll be notified as soon as the campaign launches. Send each a personal message, letting them know your campaign is coming and what you hope for them to do once it’s live.
Build, borrow, and buy a greater crowd
There’s a simple formula to growing the crowd you already have and funding higher goals:
Posts and ads + Landing page = Emails!
Use local or online influencers, paid targeted advertisements, or good old-fashioned word-of-mouth to direct people to a landing page, where you’ll entice them to subscribe to your campaign or a newsletter and be notified as soon as the campaign launches.
Our Build, Buy, & Borrow a Crowd Toolkit has great aids to help with this part!
Share, Share, Share!
Once your campaign launches (and hopefully after a few first-tier contributions), you and your supporters can use the share bar to spread this campaign across the globe. Direct post to social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, choose private media like Messenger and email, grab the short-code link for your Instagram or TikTok feed, QR code for printed flyers, or SmartWidgets to post on your or a friend’s webpage or blog.
This is the cornerstone of crowdfunding, so do not forget to put something in your story asking your supporters to share your campaign.
Would you like some further guidance on campaign promotion?
Update & Engage to build a stronger connection
Two key practices will ensure happy supporters and inspire further contributions:
- Updating. As you promised in your story, update your campaign once or twice a week to let your supporters know how you’re progressing toward this project. This article contains expert advice on how to properly write and use updates.
- Thanking your supporters. Either directly on your campaign’s activity or in a personal email, make sure you acknowledge your supporters’ generosity and let them know how much it means to you and/or the beneficiary(ies). Kindness and goodwill should be shared and spread wide, after all!
