Crowd funding platforms; which one is best?

Bump: I have been asked to use crowd funding to raise money for a charity to upgrade its computer equipment and some other specialist stuff. Wondering what is the best platform cost wise and how one goes about - finding the crowd!! Looks like this was the most relevant thread.

 

Finding a crowd...dependent on the project. Work networks, stakeholders/investors, strong-arm companies you plan to buy off into freeness because they will look good and get free advertisement... shared interest charities/orgs/associations, family/friends?

 

I'm going to a workshop on this tomorrow and will report back!

 

I think we will want to raise between £8 - 10k depending on the costs of the equipment. The charity also needs to raise money for ongoing running costs but I am assuming it would be easier to crowd fund for a specific project rather than just for "ongoing costs".

 

If it's a registered charity bt is free

 

Hi Manter, yes it is a registered charity, but what is bt?

 

It was a good workshop. They didn't go in depth into which platform is best but I can give you a rundown of every other aspect of running a crowdfunding campaign!

 

British Telecom

 

Cough, spill ... give us the beans! pls

 

https://mydonate.bt.com/charity/search.html

 

Thanks Manter, that certainly looks interesting, no charges (except credit and debit cards), and they collect gift aid as well. I will have a look at some others just for due diligence but I suspect bt will be hard to beat.

 

My beef with mydonate is that they don't take Paypal, which I think is offputting for some people. I'll type up some notes from the workshop later!

 

For the refugee stuff we went through the whole rigmarole on this. Basically if you are not a charity you have to accept a cost and a whole bunch of stuff comes into play. But if you are a charity the answer is my donate or your own platform: no fee + gift aid. Pretty impossible to argue.

I put everything through a charity who them audit my 'affiliated projects'- it's complicated but has got us loads more money over the last 6 months- I've had over £16k in donations and a fee on that is huge; plus losing out on the bump up would be criminal

 

Right so, two hours condensed into a few paras as follows. iamwithnail and others have said some of it already.

You need to have a clearly defined project in mind with which you can tell a story (here is X problem, if you give us X money we can do X). Fundraising for ongoing running costs isn't likely to work. Break the costs down and be transparent.

"If you build it they will come" does not apply. Campaigns that go viral and engage a lot of new supporters are very rare. Basically you will be relying on your existing supporters - members, family and friends etc. If you don't have those networks yet you may need to work on building them first (email lists, social media followers etc).

People mostly give out of the goodness of their hearts but you can offer rewards such as mentions on social media, tickets to a launch event, gifts etc for different levels of donation.

Some crowdfunding platforms are geared up towards charities wrt gift aid etc and some are not. Kickstarter is an all or nothing model where if you don't hit your target you get nothing so there is a risk, but OTOH people browse it looking for interesting projects. Have a look at other projects to see what worked and what didn't.

You will need to commit time to promoting it before, during and after. Think through your messaging, keep it snappy and visual if possible. Who is your audience and why should they support you? A short video is a good idea (Kickstarter requires one) - you might be able to get local film students involved. It doesn't need to be high production. Involve press/media/relevant bloggers, tweet high profile people to see if you can get a retweet. You can trail the campaign beforehand "we're going to do this, watch this space". It's a good idea to do a soft launch to immediate supporters so that there isn't a big fat zero on the page when people look - "people want to be on the party boat, not the sinking ship".

During the campaign keep thanking people and giving updates. Ask supporters to share your posts on social media. It's only for a limited time so you can pester. Thank people afterwards and update them even if you don't make your target or have problems completing the project. Also make sure you know who has supported you, hopefully you have grown your supporters and can go back to them another time.

HTH!

 

^^great advice

Also get people with better reach to share- a couple of NGOs tweet my fundraisers and it's ace, makes a huge difference.

And the good old fashioned church roof fund style thermometer seems to work

 

So, the BT site looks very good for a registered charity and probably can't be beaten, but just for the sake of due diligence I have also looked briefly at:

JustGiving Crowdfunding
Chuffed org
Crowdfunder
Kickstarter
Indiegogo

None of them seem to integrate Gift Aid and some charge 5%, both of which probably rule them out.

Are there any others I should look at?

 

Been told by a UK charity fundraiser that JustGiving and Virgin Money Giving are more popular than mydonate.bt.com ..

 

American Express were hugely generous when I worked at Brighton Unemployed Centre.

 

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/giving/about-us/fees.jsp
flat one off fee of £100 then no monthly subscription cost for charities
If you qualify for it all fees are levied out of gift aid ie a £10 donation nets your charity £12.15 .you'll have to register your charity with HMRC to qualify for Gift Aid but it seems like a straight forward proceedure, you can do this even if your raised funds are expected to be less than £5000 above that amount and you have to do some additional formfilling with the charities commission,but do your homework and get the structures built in whilst your small to save headaches later,
The Charities commission and HMRC websites will walk you through it and maybe provide items you hadn't considered
all the best

 

The people whose workshop I went to have put up a downloadable guide which covers the whole thing:
http://www.socialmisfitsmedia.com/downloads/Make_It_Rain.pdf

 

That didn't seem to work as a pdf for me.

 

Try again, I edited it, was typing in the link but I've pasted it now.

 

Thanks, works now ..

 

I never knew about BT, always used an account at justgiving for donations and I know that charges fees + monthly to the charities. BT seems like a win win for a donor!

 

They are I think it's a csr thing for them partly

 

There are a few from my regular list missing from the BT site that I will have to add via the usual justgiving portal or directly. I may drop them a note about BT when I donate. cheers