Crowdfunding – the Power of Many
I’ve blogged before about social media and fundraising – in particular looking at crowdfunding to support charities. So I was interested to read in Charlotte Higgins Culture blog on the Guardian online about a new website that launched this week – WeDidThis– which aims to enable arts organisations to fundraise for projects with donors receiving a reward for every successful campaign and a refund if the campaign doesn’t meet its target. How’s that for incentivising the fundraising team to reach their target?
I think it’s a great idea – particularly for smaller, non-venue based organisations where traditional friends schemes are often unworkable or don’t necessarily ‘fit’ with their brand. This type of project based fundraising helps donors to connect directly with the work an organisation is doing while also connecting with them possibly in a way that they are used to.
Crowdfunding was born in the US (what fundraising technique wasn’t – I hear you ask) and sites such as WeFund and the US based Kickstarter have adopted this approach to encourage large numbers of people to donate small amounts to particular projects and campaigns.
With an increasing emphasis on fundraising – particularly in light of recent and future cuts in statutory income – this provides another way to engage with donors and build donations in a low resource intensive and cost effective way.
Arts organisations are increasingly using social media to communicate with their audiences and websites that allow a similar approach to fundraising work well alongside this.
It will be interesting to see how this develops and who capitalises on it successfully – but I’m sure that it will affect the way organisations fundraise in the future and, in particular, engage with individual donors.
Great post! Something about Wefund founder Michael Troughton about his site’s unique approach to funding creative projects http://www.jotta.com/jotta/published/home/article/v2-published/1450/wefund
Thanks Jotta – enjoyed your article about Michael Troughton’s WeFund site too. Really think that these initiatives are bringing innovative approaches to fundraising and unlocking the potential of an entirely new set of donors.
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Thanks for your comment. It’s good to hear and read about all of these new crowdfunding sites that are really adding to the funding mix and offering organisations another way to raise income. Looking forward to hearing more great things from the sector as it goes from strength to strength.