Crowdfund Your Social Cause

A lot of people try to use crowdfunding because it’s the best way to try out whatever you are offering, not only for raising the funds itself but also to test out how people actually get connected with your idea. So, personally, I’m a really big fan of crowdfunding because I believe there are very few things that we can do as individuals in society and to choose how we spend our money is definitely something that is completely our responsibility. So, whatever we invest our money in, that means that we want to see more of that in the world. I believe that a lot of social entrepreneurs invest in that channel for raising funds because it’s an amazing way to not only get this money, but also to create a community that really believes and agrees with the ideas you are creating. We do a crowdfunding campaign every year, even when we have funds and even when things are going well we keep on trying and making use of this tool for the reason of really creating a community and making people to come together and in order to reach a bigger goal. So all the big milestones we had in Project Tres, they were acquired and they were like reached because of the support of individuals. So we initially started hiring 13 other women in the project in 2017 with crowdfunding. We managed to start our project in Kenya with a crowdfunding, we got our center women empowerment and development center in shelter in India with a crowdfunding. We invested in education for women with a crowdfunding and this year we are going to do a new crowdfunding as well.

The platforms you use are usually different. There are a few platforms for people that are doing something for social impact so you ended up paying less taxes for example. The other difference is that usually, for profit projects they always involve the exchange for something physical. So it’s always connected to a product. In our case, since we are a social entrepreneurship, we have both options in our crowdfunding. Usually we choose a platform that is more universal, so it would be more of a for profit choice. But we have options inside the campaign where people, they can simply donate money for supporting our NGO and our social work. Or they can also get our products that are made by the women that support them to keep on having their jobs and keep sustaining our organization. We specifically use a mix of both using a platform that is for profit, but there are these two possibilities available. Technically you can run as many crowdfunding campaigns as you want. There are a few projects they really rely on making new crowdfundings, maybe two times a year even, but I recommend that you do just when you really know you would like to reach a bigger goal. Crowdfunding is a very easy tool to use, but for sure people, they also ended up getting tired if they see too much. And if you don’t have like a creative campaign behind, so it’s not just, okay, make a login a page and then upload a little bit of information. I think what will make your campaigns be successful if you intend to do more than one, is that you have a lot of transparency and you really show how you intend to use the money as well as keep people in the loop on how you are using this money. But if you really don’t have a high demand, I would suggest to try to use a crowdfunding the least possible.

The best criteria is to first imagine which country do you get more donations from. So for example, I am originally from Brazil, but I lived one and a half years in the US and I’m based in Germany. So for me it was very important to always have one campaign running in Brazil in the local currency and with the local ways of payment as well as something more international that would be converted into dollars and euros. So this is the first step I would recommend. Make sure you understand where your donors are and if they understand the language of the platform. Second, make an analysis on the taxes and the percentage, which one makes more sense for you and how much you are able to pay, and if you have products to exchange, or if you are simply collecting donations. And third where you pay your taxes and where your bank account is. It is very important that you go through the website and understand how easy it is to make this transfers into your bank account and which kind of taxes you’re going to have to pay because of this income. These three tips are very important to take into consideration.

I use two different platforms. I use every year indiegogo, which is from the US. It’s the biggest competitor with Kickstarter. And I like Indiegogo because it’s a very easy platform to go through. You can choose the currency and it’s always very intuitive. I use another platform called Benfeitoria which is in Brazil, so it’s valid there. The taxes are very low because it’s really focused on social impact projects. These two are my choices, but there are so many nowadays and all of them have very good points and also bad points. So it’s very important that you make your decision based on that three tips.

To really stay committed to promote that campaign for 30 days or for 40 days depending on how long you’re going to run your campaign for. So this is something very complicated and to really keep people committed and involved in promoting this is a very complex task to keep on doing. So if you have volunteers, I highly recommend that you have a team of people that can be looking after a debt. I already faced some challenges related to withdrawing the money, for example. So last year I was running a campaign and every year I received the transfer into my Brazilian account. And for the first year since we had the change on the government in Brazil, I wasn’t able to receive these funds anymore and I had to change everything into receiving in my German account. So it was a very like stressful and very technical thing that at the end ended up working. But we also had to pay lots of extra taxes and things like that on that money. So it’s very, very important that you plan this crowdfunding before you launch because it’s not as simple as it looks.

One, make a great video. The video makes a huge difference. The video is everything. If you don’t have a video and if people, they don’t connect a lot with the video, they will not donate and don’t even think about sharing, then they will really not share. If you have a great video, very appealing that really explains the problem you are trying to solve and the solution you have with your organization, it’s just genius. Second, be very transparent in the price breakdown. Why do you need all that money for? What are you are going to use for? If you have to ship products, always put very much ahead in time. Don’t put it in the short time that you are not going to be able to attend. So be transparent. People know that if you work with social impact, you need to pay things that not only meals and school fees, so you can openly talk about it. People like honesty and everyone understands. And third, make sure you gathered your community, that you gathered a group of people to help you promoting this campaign and help to make this campaign go viral and really spread the word because these three things are going to make all the difference to have a successful campaign.