Crowdfunding 101: How to Set a Basic Online Fundraising Project Up for Success
Crowdfunding Advisors, FundRazr Team
If you’re reading this, you’re probably no stranger to the world of online fundraising. Crowdfunding is a powerful way to connect your cause with the people who care about it, and FundRazr’s mission is to help you do so on your own terms, under your organization’s own branding. Today, we’re going back to basics: showing you how to set up a simple, standalone fundraising project and optimize it for success.
About Standalone Projects
To put it simply, a standalone project is just that – a fundraising campaign that occurs infrequently, separate from your nonprofit’s other fundraising activities. Perhaps it’s an event that occurs seasonally, or a donation drive organized around a specific theme.
Standalone Projects help you work towards three of the seven Strategic Benefits we offer here at FundRazr.
- They can help you increase leverage, empowering volunteers, advocates, sponsors and community members to work with you.
- You’ll amplify engagement, providing your existing and potential supporters with new ways to interact with your cause.
- Standalone Projects can help ensure sustainability, giving volunteers, advocates, sponsors and community members such great experiences that they want to help out over and over again!
How it Works
Basically, Standalone Projects are FundRazr Standard Campaigns, but with added, exclusive features that help nonprofit organizations get the most out of our platform.
As a nonprofit, making use of these kind of features will help you stand out from the usual, personal crowdfunding campaign. Making use of Incentives, such as a Perk or Product gifted to those who donate a specific amount, or Wishes, that show the donor exactly where their contribution is going in a tangible way, add a fun interactivity to the campaign, engaging your supporters in a way that’s easier for them to grasp than just a dollar amount.
Features like Automatic Tax Receipts and Offline Contributions can help legitimize your nonprofit, reassuring donors that they are giving to a fully registered and legally compliant organization.
- Keep It All: All funds, once verified and deposited, are immediately available to your organization.
- Offline Contributions: Offline donations are an important part of your campaign. By registering them on your transaction list (for free), you show all the progress towards to your funding goal. You can also choose to publicly or anonymously acknowledge each donation to your community.
- Incentives: Encourages donation by offering limited edition items, original products, coupons/redeemables and pay-it-forward wishlist items. Incentives include Perks, Products, Wishes, Experiences, and Coupons.
- Automatic Tax Receipts: Using your official tax number, create formal receipts and issue them to your donors via email after their donations.
- Tax Receipts with Advantage: Through the use of our Incentives feature, we offer an additional version of Tax Receipts . If you choose to offer a Perk, Product and/or Ticket (Wishes not applicable), your organization costs are factored into the receipt for both your own financial tracking, as well as your donor’s.
- Scheduled Deadline: Choose to end your campaign on a specific date. Beneath the funds raised, a countdown will be shown to encourage donations and provide a sense of urgency.
After entering your Standalone Project’s original, campaign-specific content, all of your organization’s information, payment settings, and the like will be applied automatically – leaving you with more time to focus on what really matters – running and promoting an effective campaign!
Get Started!
So don’t wait – Standalone Projects are your go-to way to fund your nonprofit’s themed, seasonal, and infrequent campaigns! FundRazr is here to provide you with the tools that will take your fundraising campaign to the next level, whether it’s through the standalone projects we just described, Micro Projects, Volunteer Campaigns, or whatever else you can dream up!
Get started now, or register your organization with FundRazr!
