Go Fund Me and Fundraising: 5 Things to Consider when looking at Crowd-sourced funding

The IoT has driven crowdfunding sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter and Indiegogo to create an allure of curing the non-profit’s fundraising dilemma. However, there are some important considerations to review when it comes to incorporating this technology as a part of your overall non-profit strategy. Let’s look at a few of those.

1.        Crowdsourcing is King, or is it? While the idea of a crowd-sourced campaign going viral is very appealing in almost a magical way, the idea that you can simply post a campaign and it will go viral is quite inaccurate. Effective campaigns take commitment, marketing and social know-how.
2.        Crowdsourcing communications, what now? It is important to incorporate your crowdsourcing donors into your communications beyond the crowdsourcing site. Updating the crowdsourcing sites are a good first line of defense, but think about how you will take that data and share updates, opportunities for involvement and event information to that community once the campaign is over. Do you need an integration? Will you extract your list of donors and upload? How will you communicate?
3.           Preference Data and GDPR, does it matter? Absolutely. Taking your donor privacy and preferences seriously is critical to the success of any fundraising campaign. Some donors choose to be anonymous while others are fine with on-going communications. Ensure you know what your donors want, how they want to be communicated to and if they are based in a GDPR compliant country, ensure you are adhering to the GDPR policies and rules set forth.
4.        Payment processing? How will you accept payments, move them from the crowdfunding sites and into your non-profit? How will you account for the payment processing fees and crowdfunding fees? All good questions for your technical team and your accountant to be in collaboration about.
5.        Marketing technology platforms and crowdsourcing, are they one in the same? Not totally. While crowdsourcing sites typically have very good platforms where you can push updates through social media about your campaign, donor communication, nurtures and event management are not typically a part of these systems. It is a good idea to look at the user flows and map out how users of crowdfunding sites can become advocates within your own data structure and flows. A good technology expert can assist with mapping out these flows.

Remember, while sites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter seem glorious, there is still substantial backend work that needs to be set up in order for these platforms to work. But, it doesn’t have to be hard. Just chat with a tech expert who has set up these platforms and integrated data with other non-profits and the pains of the backend work will simply fade away.

PS. If you are looking for someone to do the backend work or just have questions, Geekibo is offering a complimentary one hour consultation to discuss your needs. Click here to talk to a tech expert now.