Crowdfunding is popular with individuals and organizations alike. You can use it to raise money for virtually any cause. Unfortunately, with so many people using crowdfunding sites, it can be hard to stand out among the thousands of other online campaigns. Putting a couple of posts on Facebook or Twitter asking people to fund your travels is no longer enough.
If you want to reach your goal, you need to get creative when asking for donations. Why not try these 7 tactics?
1: Create outstanding content that links back to your campaign page – and share it!
Establish yourself as an authority on your topic and convey your enthusiasm by creating articles or videos and sharing them on as many sites as possible.
For example, if you want to volunteer to teach English abroad in a developing country, you could submit a guest post about barriers to education to a teaching blog. You could then include your campaign link in your author bio, along with a few sentences about what you hope to achieve on your travels.
2: Reach out to people who have met their goals
Find someone who has already funded a similar campaign. Make direct contact and ask them which strategies worked best; they might have mastered the art of targeting people with a special interest in your cause. If you make a positive impression, they may also give you a signal boost.
3: Get in your local paper
Local publications always want human interest stories, so reach out and tell them about your project. If they like your story, they might let you include a link to your page in their article.
4: Give an interactive talk or workshop about who you are, what you want to do, and why people should support you
Putting yourself out there is nerve-wracking, but engaging with people in your community and entertaining them with a story can boost your donations. When you give talks or workshops, you are no longer just a person on a campaign page, but an individual embarking on an important mission.
5: Write a song or poem, and let it go viral
Why not write a memorable song or poem about who you are and why you want to travel? If you are going to a country where people do not speak English as a first language, you could even have it translated to the local language.
6: Get creative with your donor rewards
Human beings have a natural tendency to ask, “What’s in it for me?” Take advantage of this inclination by offering donor rewards. This works particularly well with local businesses. For instance, you could offer to take a promotional photo of a product or mascot in a particular spot in exchange for a donation.
7: If you are undertaking a special charity trip, get back in touch with your alma mater and ask to be featured in their alumni newsletter
Colleges are usually keen to support former students in their endeavors, especially if they will benefit a charitable cause. Make contact well in advance of setting up your campaign, so that by the time you are featured in their newsletter, your page will be up and running.
There’s no doubt that crowdfunding is harder than it used to be, but thousands of people still meet their goals every year. With a comprehensive strategy in place, you can be among them.
About the Author:
Kristin Savage has graduated from Columbia University where she was majoring in Germanic Languages. Besides English as her mother tongue she also speaks German and Dutch fluently. Currently Kristin is studying Spanish and planning to obtain her PhD in Applied Linguistics since she is interested in how to use her to some extent practical knowledge of language processes in everyday life. She has been a writer at Pick Writers for a few years and is known for her thorough approach to all the tasks and aspiration to fulfill assignments with flying colors.
