3 great extra benefits of crowdfunding campaigns for nonprofits

Welcome back the the Miratel blog and today we’ll be taking a further look at the continued growth of nonprofit fundraising via crowfunding. On yesterday’s post we previewed some of the likely results for overall fundraising results in 2014 along with some of the changes within the industry. Without a doubt crowdfunding remains a newer option that might work well for specific goals or events.

While crowdfunding isn’t exclusively aimed at nonprofits more and more organizations have successfully employed this approach over the last year. Speaking of growth; it was estimated that total funding raised via crowdfunding doubled from 2012 to 2013 and early indicators are that it is poised to do the same in 2014. Such growth is rarely seen and speaks volumes about the appeal to the online audience and massive viral potential of trying to take certain campaigns into this arena.

In case you missed them, we’ve written a number of useful posts about crowdfunding in the past which you may find helpful if this is a direction you might be considering for fundraising next year. Below you’ll find the titles and links to some of those posts:

• Explosive growth of crowdfunding continues to bring good news to nonprofits
• Crowdfunding success for nonprofit fundraising via Indiegogo?
• What can established nonprofits learn from the success of crowdsourcing?
• Crowdfunding Tips for Successful End-of-Year Nonprofit Fundraising Campaigns
• Is crowdsourcing bringing awareness to CSR business strategies?

In addition to being an exciting way of raising funds crowdfunding also brings a series of related benefits that users don’t automatically consider when venturing into this type of fundraising.

Two-Way Engagement

I’ve participated with and assisted a few different crowdfunding ventures as a supporter and I tend to slip into social media observer mode as I watch events unfurl over the days and weeks of a campaign and what I’ve seen is truly exciting. The nature of crowdfunding inherently builds and encourages engagement from the organization itself and the donors throughout the process. The ‘rewards’ you often see matched against donations get discussed and the entire campaign promotes genuine excitement and interest about what the goals and objectives of the funding are. Moreover it creates a really nice open forum for supporters to share ideas, questions or simply offer good wishes in a conversational way that is hard to replicate elsewhere.

Building Awareness

Crowdfunding as an entity is causing a huge amount of buzz and interest in general and particularly via the media itself and some of the biggest social media channels for technology. Beyond the obvious benefit of raising funds campaigns get talked about and shared in social media as a point of interest drawing attention that might otherwise be hard to source for your organization. A ‘buzz-worthy’ crowdfunding cause can bring in an audience far beyond that what a traditional approach might do and even those who don’t donate tend to learn a great deal about the work you do.

Networking

One of the greatest side benefits of crowdfunding campaigns in all sectors according to those who have hosted them is the building of links with a whole new type of supporter/follower. It certainly seems that many who support these ‘crowd’ campaigns might not typically otherwise be finding out about and consequently funding the type of causes that they learn about via crowdfunding. That in itself is a very interesting dynamic and paves the way to build brand new long-term supporter relationships long after a particular crowdfunding campaign has closed.

Tomorrow I’ve got some additional interesting statistics about crowdfunding, many that I found genuinely surprising, that may well have you reconsidering (in a positive manner) whether the overall concept of crowdfunding is a good match for your nonprofit organization. It’s been a remarkably good fit for specific nonprofit fundraising goals that typically have a deadline date and fairly shortened window of funding to operate within.

____________________________________________________________________________________

For nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, CSR business and other news, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Pinterest or subscribe to our RSS feed.

Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including PCI compliant inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.