What Is Crowdfunding?
Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people on one main campaign site. With CauseVox’s crowdfunding template, you’re able to set up and design your own site easily. Crowdfunding may be a good option if your organization is:
Is new to online fundraising without an existing base of supporters
Needs to raise a large amount of funds in a short amount of time
Has a specific project you’re looking to fund
You’d like a basic donation page
Aside from just a simple and straightforward crowdfunding site, our customization options allow you to use one campaign site for fundraising needs such as:
Disaster relief fundraising
Annual fundraising campaigns
Capital campaigns
Project specific fundraising
Here's some common questions we've heard asked by customers about crowdfunding, and some best practices to help guide you:
How Long Should A Crowdfunding Campaign Be?
For a standard crowdfunding campaign, it's typically best to keep it under 60-90 days to create a sense of urgency around your campaign.
However, the length or your specific campaign should be very customized to your needs. We've seen 16 hour crowdfunding campaigns do well and campaigns without an end date succeed. Here's a few things to consider your campaign length:
Timeliness: Is there a particular cultural event (ie. awareness day, GivingTuesday, vote, etc.) that I can rally my audience around? These days should either be used as the start date or the last date of the campaign for maximum impact.
Promotion: How quickly can you get the word out about your campaign to your audience? We recommend preparing your promotional materials ahead of time and having supporters commit to donating and sharing your campaign with you once you launch to get the word out quickly.
Deadlines: Are there any deadlines coming up that you'll need the funds by in order to fund a program? That's a good end date to work backwards from, and it's good to use to motivate your supporters.
Keep in mind that short term campaigns drive urgency, while long term campaigns do work to raise funds year-round.
What Should I Set As My Campaign Goal? How Much Is Too Much?
With fundraising goals, there’s a few factors you need to take into consideration. To pinpoint your specific fundraising goal, ask yourself:
What is the impact that I’d like to accomplish through this campaign?
What is the budget needed to reach this goal?
What needs to happen in order to reach the goal?
However, setting a specific goal can only do so much, since you’ll need to be sure it’s attainable for your organization. Here’s a few questions you can ask yourself to help you determine what fundraising goal is attainable for you:
What have we raised in past events or online campaigns?
What is our average size donation?
How many people donated to our last campaign?
What resources does my organization have to commit to the fundraising process (hours, money)?
For more tips on goal setting view our guide Goal Setting: Making Your Campaign SMART.
What Do I Need To Setup My Campaign?
Take a look at this handy checklist to learn what you should prepare for your campaign: Checklist: What Steps You Need To Take To Setup Your Campaign.
How Often Should I Send Updates?
We recommend sending updates about your campaign to your audience as frequently as possible so they're informed about your campaign. For short term campaigns, we recommend sending:
At least 3 emails throughout your campaign
At least 3 posts on Facebook a week
At least 1 post on Facebook a day
Writing at least 4 posts throughout your campaign, or one post a week, whichever is more frequent.
This way, you can communicate stories to help drive donations, updates about your campaign progress, and more to your audience.
How much staff should be dedicated to running the campaign?
We recommend having one point person for the CauseVox campaign, but it's always helpful to have others involved with blog posts, marketing, and donor communications. Dedication of staff time should be considered depending on how much you're hoping to raise and if there's any external factors (ie: a campaign event).
A good way to take time off of staff is to ask volunteers to help and/or ask your supporters to create their own personal fundraising page so they can fundraise on your behalf!
How many campaigns can I run at once?
On CauseVox, we don't limit you to a certain number of campaigns at a time.
Typically our users run one fundraising campaign per quarter, such as a spring, summer, fall, and winter (year-end) campaign.