Covid-19 slumped major economic players & corporates, leading to a major crunch of funds in every sector possible - leading to loss of jobs, and indicating need of more funds. But interestingly, this brought many individual players to the forefront filling up this gap of funds - at least, partially - through major crowdfunds. Not just many organisations picked up this cause, but even more started in this time to cater to help communities with the crisis. Humane Warriors started with similar cause to support vulnerable communities with lack of funds, bringing in the funds from those who had excess of them. Over course of 8 months, we ran 3 major crowdfunds, and 2 events to raise funds through individuals, contributing to the total of about 60,000 CHF (5 mil. INR).
What a crowdfund campaign paid for at Humane Warriors.
The journey from starting the first-ever crowdfunding campaign at Humane Warriors, to managing external crowdfunding campaigns for organisations like Capacity (raised 50,000 CHF) was very rewarding, and no doubt filled with loads of learnings. So lets directly jump into them.
On crowdfunding
The network power
Crowdfunding is basically what it is literally - funding by crowd, usually the community members you are close to i.e. the first or second degree connections in your network. Thus, it’s success depends a lot on how large is your network and/or how large is the network of your first/secind degree connect. But just the size of the network is not to be looked for, what matters further is the effectiveness of this network. For example, if your network belongs to immigrants, a crowdfund aimed at immigrants’ integration program might be appealing to everyone - and thus it might be effective to mobilise this network for gathering funds.
Communication is the key
For success of crowdfund, it is very important to have the right communication tailored to the individuals of the network you are aiming to approach. That is why crowdfunding campaigns can be very demanding: as you might have to approach many individuals personally. One way is to divide your audience with the cause or the appeal of the crowdfund which might be interesting for them, e.g. some of them might be interested in the cause, others in the perks of it, etc.
Lot, really a lot of planning
Like any other project, crowdfund needs an immense amount of planning. As crowdfunds usually are limited by time, or they lose interest within an average duration of a month, you have to keep attention of the crowd intact in this short span of time. There are lot of tutorials and templates which can help you in planning your crowdfund well before you launch it - but mostly the pillars to focus on are
what: are you offering? why is it unique to this crowd?
who: are you offering it to?
why: what is your cause to offer it? this is crucial for strong connection with your crowd.
how: are you planning to keep your crowd engaged
during (your communication medium/ strategy during the entire crowdfund, e.g. you can start a complete new medium for attracting and hooking the audience to the campaign, and potentially recurring donations.)
after the crowdfund (e.g. the perks as return of the donation, to keep your audience attached to the project and maintaining a good customer/ donors base for future)
Timely communication is key
Role of intuitions and risks involved
When I was working with the Capacity Zurich team, I heard a lot of time the sentence which started something like “I feel …. would be willing to contribute … “. Being a quantitative person, I was not very willing to give a lot of weightage to “feels” - as I wanted actual numbers of potential supporters to estimate the target amount for the campaign. But refering back to the first point in this list “the network power”, it was clear that the proximity and effectiveness of the network is difficult to be guaged quantitatively, and this is a calculated risk you and your team members should be willing to take.
Can corporates be included?
Yes and no, depends on your goals, cause and (existing)partnerships. Though corporates tend to support crowdfund for (1) a non-profit cause as a part of their corporate social responsibility programs, or (2) a for-profit project as a potential investor, or (3) just as a support towards a partnering organisation, the returns are quite low in each case for the corporates to be involved. But, a trick to lure in the corporates could be through the perks of the crowdfund itself e.g. providing an exclusive session for corporates in your expertise, or exclusive executive presentation related to your project updates by the core team.
On teams
Ousider and insider in the team
As an insider (in the core team) at Humane Warriors, and as an outsider (supporting the core team) at Capacity Zurich, the crowdfunding experiences were quite different. The former had the advantage of knowing the team better and thus the campaigns were easy to be built with the up to date access to information on the team needs and resources. At the same time, being an outsider allowed out-of-box thinking: innovative marketing and audience-targeted approaches.
Capacity’s crowdfunding team
Talent and partner mapping
With a diverse team, and like for any other project it is quite crucial to map the talents in the team to the evolving tasks of the crowdfunding to keep it sustained and successful. For example, a team member who hesitates to make personal requests to the donors, should not be on the forefront of the communications of the campign.
Also, when we are talking about the network of the team, it is important to include the network of the partners as well. A dedicated communication (and team member(s)) needs to be set up for this extended network, especially for the partners who are close knit to.
Team culture
As you are closely involved with the audience of the campaign, your culture can be very-well exposed to the audience, so be aware of it. Usually it is an advantage, e.g. if your team is very inclusive, and you are working on a campign on gender inclusivity at workplace, it can play a very significant role in bringing dedicated donors.
Looking back at the overall experience, no doubt that additional to these learnings on crowdfunding and team managements, there were many personal learnings from these campaigns. While working with multiple people: donors and team members, I noticed my subtle transition from many self-doubts (‘I don’t know this’) towards small self-discoveries (‘this is what I don’t know, what I know’), and I will always remain grateful for this experience.