One of the most popular and prominent crowdfunding platforms in the creative field is the American www.kickstarter.com, launched in April 2009. Kickstarter has raised $40 million dollars for 7,500 projects in 2 years with a success rate of approximately 40%. Crowd funding has been experimented in various industries: music and film production, microcredit, funding of startup companies.
Recently, Margit Klingen Daams at Forum for Kultur og Næringsliv wrote a blog article on crowdfunding to mark the occasion of the Swedish www.fundedbyme.com platform launching its Norwegian site. Their local partner is the Soria Moria Foundation and on June 17 the Swedish team are promoting Funded By Me in Oslo (June 20 in Trondheim). Funded By Me platform was launched in April 2011 and the team recently ranked at no. 11 in the Swedish magazine Internetworld's yearly list of web entrepreneurs.
While the Norwegian site is already up and running, the number of Norwegian projects is still very scarce. We encourage you to explore the opportunities of crowdfunding – all you need to get started is to create a profile, put up information about your project, upload a video, determine a budget and get the funding started.
People can pledge money to their project by using their credit card. Only the projects that reach their financial targets within the deadline (10-90 days) receive funding. Funded By Me will keep 6% of the raised funds (equal to or exceeding the target) to cover their own costs. If you don’t achieve your target, Funded By Me doesn’t earn a dime!
Here are a few tips of how to make sure that your project is successful (=raises the target amount of financing) based on a presentation by Martin Thörnkvist at Malmö’s Media Evolution at this year’s by:Larm and numerous online sources.
Good idea … as always!
Have a project that has broad appeal and a focused mission. The most successful crowdfunding projects are simple enough for anyone to understand, directly improve the lives of others and have either an artistic or a social responsibility aspect.
Have a specific, attainable fundraising goal!
This means that the scope of your project will have to be less ambitious than saving the world. Calculate the financial cost of success, and carefully compare it to your social circles. Do you know enough people with enough money and enough interest to meet your projected costs? If not, rethink your plan and come up with a fresh figure.
Keep it simple!
In all things – from concept to plan to messaging to execution – keep it simple. Your crowdfunding project title should be instantly understandable; its description should be just a few paragraphs long; all images and video should serve to advance the message or story. While your crowdfunding campaign should appear effortless, it is the extensive preparation and editing that makes it simple. Keeping things simple is one step that requires trying.
Spend time on a video!
Tell about your project, tell about yourself. This is where the art of storytelling as a marketing tool comes in handy. But remember to keep it simple!
Offer creative rewards to your contributors!
The rewards serve as the foundation for the exchange – enticing people to contribute at various price points. Think of what you can offer beyond the obvious – i.e. if you are a musician that can bake cookies you can tap into your culinary skills to develop original rewards. The rewards give power to your network and offer the opportunity to influence the creative process and end results.
Give proof of what you are doing!
Write weekly updates on your crowdfunding blog explaining what you did that week to advance the project. Post photos and short videos of your project in action. Get third parties to give you testimonials or speak on behalf of your project.
Above all - don’t forget to spread the word about your crowdfunding project!
Write the perfect introductory mass email and send it once. Tell a story, make it interesting and ask recipients to take an action of some kind. Get them to subscribe your email list and blog, connect with you on Twitter and Facebook, and so on. Also, ask for the donation.
Recruit ambassadors
Spread to thousand networks
Bloggers are your best friends
Becoming familiar with the crowdfunding platforms is not only great for raising money for your own projects, but also engaging in the exciting projects put forward by others. Apart from arts and culture field, crowdfunding is growing in popularity as a funding instrument also for social projects.
One of many examples is www.jumo.com, a social network connecting individuals and organisations working to change the world. It has 15.000 members and works with more than 250 issues from poverty alleviation to women’s rights to freedom of the press; also cultural. Jumo is founded and directed by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and director of online organising for Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign, which was effectively another excellent example of crowdfunding.