Nonproft and Charity Fundraising Podcast Salvador Briggman

Launching a crowdfunding project for a nonprofit, cause, or charity is an increasingly popular way to not only engage existing donors, but to also discover new ones!

We’ve already covered some of the best practices to raise money for a personal crowdfunding campaign. In this podcast, we’re going to focus on how to launch a successful crowdfunding project for your nonprofit.

Get the show notes here: crowdcrux.com/nonprofit-crowdfunding-tips/

Multiple Myeloma Opportunities for Research and Education is a nonprofit organization that has raised a staggering $86,000+ to help #endmyeloma and expedite bringing a promising new study from the lab to the clinic.

In the first episode of the Nonprofit and Charity Fundraising Podcast (a sub-section of our popular CrowdCrux Crowdfunding Podcast), I've interviewed Sarah Kaufmann-Fink who is the inspiration behind the creation of MMORE and it's mission to support multiple myeloma research. In 2005 at the age of 22, she was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which led her parents to start the nonprofit organization.

Although she responded well to her treatment and is currently in remission, Sarah is still a champion of the cause and was nice enough to give me an inside look into the fundraising campaign. You can listen to our interview below or on iTunes.

Show Notes
- Campaign Website: #endmyeloma.

- Nonprofit Organization: MMORE: Multiple Myeloma Opportunities for Research & Education.

- MMORE provided a wealth of information for donors to draw on including: press releases, social media post templates, FAQs, fundraising letters, and more (no pun intended). You can check out all the amazing resources here.

- The organization decided to use CauseVox after carefully researching other peer to peer fundraising platforms (like these). They wanted to keep costs low and hosting their own campaign on their own website would have added costs.

- They also liked all of the information that CauseVox put out there in terms of how to craft a good fundraising campaign. (Check out their blog here).

- Most of the organization's donations up until this point have come from in-person events and some online giving. This is their first full-fledged online fundraising campaign. They decided to do it during the month of March because March is Multiple Myeloma awareness month.

- Not all crowdfunding websites allow people to create their own fundraising page. Using peer to peer fundraising has been a great choice for MMORE.

- Posting Facebook videos and thank you shout-outs has resulted in more engagement and donations.

- Rather than using the term "crowdfunding" it might make more sense to use the word "online fundraising" or "donate online" because the terminology is more familiar.

- Going forward, MMORE will be doing more videos in the future, as it has driven some great engagement.

- Looking backwards, the organization would have planned out more time for the campaign and to line up more marketing materials.

What question do you have for MMORE?
Leave a comment down below! Also, take a second to donate to their initiative as a way of thanking them for sharing their experience!

Podcast Show Notes
Get the full show notes at crowdcrux.com.

Sabrina is the National Marketing Director of RaiseHope.org, a Canadian online fundraising platform.

Links: Company Website. Company Twitter.

RaiseHope has a Perk Marketplace where donors can choose rewards like a $5 gift card if they pledge $15. All of the perks in this marketplace are e-gift cards. This sets them apart from other fundraising platforms.

The cost of all of the perks in the perk marketplace for nonprofits and charities is 42.5%. If a perk is “give $20 to get a $10 starbucks giftcard,” then the cost of that perk tier is 42.5% and the remainder goes to the fundraiser.

The cost of using RaiseHope is 5% of your funds raised for the flexible or fixed funding option.

A person would do an “all or nothing” type of fundraising campaign if their ability to deliver perks or rewards is directly tied to them raising their fundraising goal. For more info see this article.

There are a lot of misconceptions around crowdfunding. The longer crowdfunding is around, the more educated people will become and how it works best. You need to bring your own crowd. Most people think there are people out there scouring the internet with bags of money to support your project and that’s not the case.

Crowdfunding is work. You need to bring your own crowd, do a lot of the planning up front, and you need to share your campaign. You need a plan to market the project.
Your network will affect how you go about marketing your campaign. Crowdfunding is best used when it’s initiative-based.

Charities can create a partner page on RaiseHope to engage in a peer to peer fundraising campaign where their donors raise money from their own social network. You can learn about the peer to peer fundraising process here.

In our previous interview with Rose Spinelli, we talked about how to encourage people to share charity-based campaigns on social media.

Fiverr services are best used for creating tangible assets, like a video, a logo, or design t-shirts. It’s not a good idea to use it for marketing services.

RaiseHope mainly helps with idea generation for perks with their free consulting calls. RaiseHope also helps with crafting your organization’s story, which can be used to enhance the campaign or PR outreach.

You should always be updating your donors and celebrating your progress to keep them engaged with your campaign.

The website also has functionality to raise money around an event from sponsors, donors, and to sell tickets.

You can donate from anywhere in the world, but charitable tax receipts are only available for Canadian charities at the time of writing.

Incorporating mobile giving into an online fundraising campaign is a natural progression and where the industry is headed.