What is Crowdfunding?
Introduction
Crowdfunding is the process of raising funds for various reasons with a successful awareness campaign. Here in this article, we will discuss a successful strategy about how to do crowdfunding including advantages & disadvantages. It is very crucial to understand the process of crowdfunding before we take any step towards the journey of raising funds.
Crowdfunding can be done for many reasons. For example, a charitable institution or a trust is required to raise funds for social causes. A student might start a crowdfunding campaign for his higher studies in India or abroad. A startup business venture would ask for money from potential investors to cover the expenses of business operations or expansion of the business. Understanding how to do crowdfunding including advantages & disadvantages will help to immaculately design a perfect and strong crowdfunding campaign.
How To Do Crowdfunding
Choose the Right Platform
The first thing you need to confirm before you get started with your crowdfunding campaign is to choose the right platform. It makes a lot of difference when you choose the right platform because it becomes very easy to track and monitor the campaign process with the right platform. The structure of the platform should suit your objective to generate great results.
We have shortlisted the Ravik Foundation as the best crowdfunding platform for you to start your crowdfunding campaign. With their expertise in executing many campaigns like arts and culture preservation to generating funds for the education of children to women’s empowerment, it becomes an obvious choice to select the Ravik Foundation as the trusted partner.
The ease of using the Crowdfunding platform from The Ravik Foundation plays an important role in monitoring the progress of the crowdfunding campaign. The strong social media reach of the Ravik Foundation makes it very easy to reach a wide audience of donors.
You can visit their platform by clicking on the link https://ravik.org/
Create a compelling Campaign
The success of any crowdfunding campaign lies in the appeal of the campaign. If the campaign is appealing to the people then only people will engage with the cause. For this, you need to make use of proper images and videos. With good images and videos, you can craft a compelling campaign with the crowdfunding platform. The campaign landing page must be informative and should create awareness about why people should engage in the campaign. The creatives like images and videos should convey the message to the audience.
Promoting your campaign
The promotion of a crowdfunding campaign is an important factor. Even if you have created a strong compelling campaign if it is not well promoted then it will fail to create awareness and it will not be successful in terms of fundraising.
In today's world, billions of people are using social media. There are billions of emails sent every day. Here your crowdfunding platform should help you to reach the social media users and it will make or break the success of the crowdfunding campaign. It is the best method to capture the emails of your backers and you can regularly send them emails about the campaign's success and the recent updates.
It has become very easy to reach the audience of your crowdfunding campaigns with the help of social media channels. Short videos and reels are effective mediums to convey the message in a short duration.
Offering Attractive Rewards to the Donors
Offering relevant rewards to your backers can make a lot of difference in the success of the campaign. Every donor finds the reward system attractive and it results in higher pledges. Make a unique and attractive reward system. Many organizations have adopted this process in their crowdfunding campaigns.
Engaging with Backers
With the help of so many online platforms, it is very easy for you to engage with your donors. Many people will ask for more details on different social media posts then you should reply to them with proper answers. This attention towards your backers will help you to create rapport with them and it will lead to better success of your future campaigns.
Fulfilling your commitments
Once the campaign is complete then you should fulfill the promises given to your backers. The success and the transparent reports should be made available to the backers. It will build trust between the donors.
Further, we will discuss the advantages of a crowdfunding Campaign.
Advantages of crowdfunding
Access to funds without traditional Investing Methods
Asking for funds for your campaign is not a new thing but traditional methods like shares after investments or loads are different from crowdfunding. In crowdfunding the backers provide support without anything in return as in the case of loans.
If you take the example of a bright student who has always been exceptional in studies and if starts a crowdfunding campaign to cover the expenses of his higher studies then his donors will have a different mindset than the bank who will support his higher studies.
Building a Community of Supporters
With the help of constant engagement with your backers, you can create a strong community of supporters. These supporters will be your best advocates than anyone else. The strong network of supporters will provide you a proper feedback and improvements in your campaigns if required.
If you nurture this community of supporters properly then you can build a good list of continuous supporters for your future campaigns as well.
Marketing and Advertising opportunities
If you are raising funds for your startup business and expansion of your business operations then the strong network of backers can be the best advertising platform to spread awareness about your business. With good engagement, the backers will advertise your services and it will be a great boost for your business.
In such a manner you can also save your social media marketing and advertising costs. It will also give you a good idea of where you should concentrate more to expand the business services.
Disadvantages of Crowdfunding
High competition on Crowdfunding Platforms
It requires strong and compelling storytelling for a successful crowdfunding campaign because there are so many projects on lots and lots of crowdfunding platforms trying to grab the attention of the users. It becomes highly important to convey the message and sound genuine to the audience about your project.
Special efforts are required by your team to grab the attention of your audience so that they will contribute to the cause. It requires strategic planning and expert advertising efforts.
Time-Consuming Nature of the Campaign Management
A crowdfunding campaign will take its time to generate awareness about the cause. It requires special monitoring of the campaign's progress. You can do this with the help of a good crowdfunding platform but still, it will take time to generate the weekly or monthly reports.
You might need to make some changes in the appeal about the response that the campaign is generating.
The Fees and Charges of the Crowdfunding Platform
When you are using a good crowdfunding platform it will come with certain costs. The platform might charge a one-time charge to host your campaign or it will deduct some percentage of the amount from the total funds generated by the campaign.
Whatever might be the plan of service charge you need to take into account that some expenses will occur in the process of the crowdfunding campaign.
Risk of Campaign Failure
You need to take into account that there are chances that the campaign you have started to raise the funds might not reach its ultimate goal There are chances that after investing so much time and effort to create a crowdfunding campaign it might not deliver the results as expected.
The campaign failure will not only result in expenses but it also can damage your reputation among the audience. Hence it is of utmost importance to create a strong compelling appeal to the audience.
Pressure to deliver the promises made to the backers
After the campaign is successful, the next step is to deliver the promises made to the backers. The promises can be about the rewards or execution of the campaign goal. You need to constantly work hard on the project crowdfunding cause. It is a matter of trust and credibility of your campaign among your backers.
Conclusion
Here in this article, we discussed What is Crowdfunding, how to do crowdfunding, and the advantages & disadvantages of crowdfunding. It is also important to know the advantages as well as disadvantages of crowdfunding campaigns. If you follow the steps given in this article to create a successful crowdfunding campaign then it is very easy to generate a successful crowdfunding campaign and execute a successful project. You can visit the Ravik Foundation crowdfunding platform by clicking on the link https://ravik.org/
FAQs
1. How Do I Choose the Right Crowdfunding Platform?
The main things to consider about a good Crowdfunding platform are the ease of operating the platform and the high reach of the platform. The charges to host a crowdfunding campaign on the platform are also an important factor.
2. What Should I Consider When creating a campaign?
The most important thing about a crowdfunding campaign is a compelling story. You can make use of images and videos that will convey the message to the audience.
3. How to promote the campaign effectively?
With billions of users online, it is essential to make use of social media to generate awareness and create a campaign that can go viral is very easy.
4. What is important once the campaign is complete?
It is very important to fulfill the commitments made to the backers about any rewards. The project cause execution is also equally important as the campaign.
