1. The Crowdfunding Challenge
2012
The Results!
Sponsored by In partnership with

10. Buzzbnk enables social ventures to
offer 3 types of loans and in
combination with other engaging
benefits:*
- Revenue Participation
Share a set % of future revenues of the
project
* We have reviewed our business model in detail with the FSA under the guidance of our lawyers, Bates Wells & Braithwaite, and the conclusion is that there are no
activities which currently need to be regulated, including our service to introduce potential lenders (Backers) to borrowers (Ventures) for unsecured loans.

15. Burning the Clocks
created by
mmunity arts charity Same Sky
A unique event that brings the
people of Brighton together for a
seasonal celebration for all faiths.
This spectacular free lantern
parade and fire show turns the
spotlight away from the more
commercial side of Christmas
and lights up the darkest of
winter nights

16. Activities
• New marketing • Offline: Raffles, bucket
materials: bookmarks, flyers, collecting at other events
posters • Personal emails to
• Websites: links on websites, contacts and suppliers
ads
• Asking individuals &
• Email campaigns groups to spread the
• PR: press releases & radio word: MPs, CVSF, etc.
interviews
• Internal comms:
• Social media: Twitter, Brainstorms, thermometer,
FB: reward info, FB group, specific asks, positive feedback
Christmas presents, soft asks,
retweet day, images, etc.

17. Now it’s over…
Results Lessons
• Raised £4,000 target! • Personal approach best
• Major donors • Planning time
• Raised profile of ourselves • Make time every day
as a charity • Include time to be
• Increase in followers on responsive
social media & new • Utilise what you’re doing
supporter details already
• Local companies got in • Internal comms proportion
touch to offer support • Ask… then ask again!
• Internal shift: New approach • The “Creative Soul”
for staff
• Right for this? For now?

18. Turning an empty house into a home
LATCH is aiming to raise the funds to refurbish an empty house,
with unemployed volunteers, creating a home for a homeless
family in Leeds.
By doing this we will:
• Provide opportunities for long term unemployed people to gain
skills, confidence and work experience.
• Provide a secure good quality home for a homeless family.
• Contribute towards improving the neighbourhood and reducing
the problems caused by empty homes.
All the money raised will be spent directly on the house.

19. Activities
• Devised a range of relevant awards for our
supporters
• Designed leaflets, posters and display
• Contacted MC members, families, friends, local
organisations and other contacts to ask them to
donate and spread the word
• Social media
• Media coverage - local radio and newspaper
• AGM
• Raffle

20. Results and lessons learned
• Media coverage, more followers and raised profile…but
we didn’t reach our milestone
• Setting up Localgiving page
• Took much more time than anticipated!
• Plan ahead and do groundwork before campaign starts
• Allocate time and resources for duration of campaign,
for planned activities and unexpected opportunities
• It takes time to get people on board
• Allow time to organise offline fundraising activities to
get the word out and support the challenge.

21. 60 opportunities every week
Over 100 regular volunteers
90-100 children and vulnerable
adults with disabilities each year
9 horses...
Nancy and Edward retire to
the hills of Buckinghamshire
after nearly 20 years’ work

22. Our Crowdfunding Challenge
Supporters
Volunteers
Parents
ASK Trustees
Contacts
Press releases
Personal stories PR
ONLINE Facebook
Tweeting
Sam’s Blog
EVENTS
Bake sale
Talk to local group

23. Successes:
• £980 towards a new horse
• Lots of articles in local papers
• Links with community websites
Lessons:
• The Crowdfunding approach isn’t right for every project
• Take 6 months to plan and chose the right time to launch
• Do the leg-work before you start
• You can’t do it on you own
• Be prepared to spend 2-3 hours, every day of the campaign

24. Our Project

25. Raising the Crowd
1. Mailing List
2. Targeted Mailing to Specific Interest Groups eg Banks
3. Bag Packs
4. Book Sales
5. Jumble Sale
6. Raffle Tickets
7. Lobbying Local Grant Providers
8. Involving Local Councillors and MP’s

27. “I was always interested in
arts and crafts, but never
had the time or confidence
to keep it up – now I’ve
redeveloped my talents
and have been thinking
about starting a business,
but didn’t have a clue
where to start.
ReWorked – A craft “It’s almost as though
they’ve picked my brain to
business to boost skills, grow find exactly what I needed
confidence and inspire and when. If I can get to
women in East Lancashire the stage where I can start
my own business, I would
be over the moon!”

28. •Sharing
- Newsletter, Face Book, Twitter, LinkedIn, Emails
•Talking
- Community Radio, Local Newspapers, Community
Groups, Networks, People
•Eating
- Cake Sale, Tombola, Coffee Morning, Coffee and Cake

29. How Did We Do?
First In kind support
200+ likes on fundraising – advice , £950
On way to 2nd
BuzzBnk milestone
Milestone
volunteers, raised to
Appeal Page reached (£550) training, date
materials
Next time….
• Get the team on board BEFORE you launch
• Let your team know exactly what they need to do
• Map out your contacts…who else can help you reach
your goal?

30. Gig Buddies

32. Results and lessons

33. We hit our target

34. Make time

35. Ask for help

36. Build a supportive crowd

37. Be specific

38. Share ideas

39. Love your crowd

40. Food works

41. Be creative

42. Social Media

43. www.buzzbnk.org/gigbuddies
paul@stayuplate.org
@heavy_load
www.stayuplate.org

44. Newlyn Art Gallery

50. The BIGsleepover
Do you remember having sleepovers with your friends?
Have you ever had a sleepover with 50 of your friends?!
The BIGsleepover is going to make that happen for local children in
Newham!
The BIGsleepover is an exciting new respite care project for families with challenging home-lives in east London.
It will:
• Support Parents who have few breaks from their hardworking lives, and little time or space to call their own
•Provide exciting overnight play opportunities for local children
•Offer support to those families who are most vulnerable.
We will
•Run a series of sleepovers in our community centre in Manor Park
•Provide a fun trip outside of the centre for each sleepover
•Fill the Froud Centre with exciting games, and activities (inflatables, story-telling, arts and crafts)
•Provide healthy delicious snacks and meals whilst the children are in our care
•Provide pyjamas and sleeping bags for those families who do not have them available
All this will be FREE to the families ensuring that it is open to as many children as possible. Each sleepover will
accommodate at least 50 local children and will be supervised at all times by our team of highly qualified play-workers.

51. What did we do?
• Promotional Materials
•Mapping contacts and supporters
•Letters and emails
•Poster / Leaflets in Mail-out
•Events (Family Fun Day)
•Personal asks (work colleagues,
partner organisations etc.)
•Board of Trustees
•Local Media
•Social Media
We’re continuing to work on lots of this, and think of new ways of promoting the project.
We have some more events in the pipeline and hopefully will get the chance to make a
video for the project in the next couple of weeks.

52. What we learnt?
We successfully reached our first milestone of £3,000!
The Good Stuff The not-so-Good Stuff
• We actually have lots of people who want to • Online fundraising is really hard when you’re
support us working with vulnerable people
• We can make good use of online and offline • If individuals donate offline they get no
donors acknowledgement on the website
• Offline fundraising proved more successful • It’s a lot more work keeping track of offline
• Face –to-face contact is the best way of donations
getting people to commit money. • Whilst we’ve found a higher number of offline
• Getting the right person to make the ask is donations, they are more time-consuming to
crucial come by
• Asking donors to ask others to give is useful • Everything takes time and energy
• Giving donors ownership of the project can be • You need to be a planning machine!
helpful in spreading the word • You need a few high level donors.

53. Mind the Gap
Arr Pirate App

54. Activities

55. Lessons Learned
Get your core team involved ASAP!
Plan your campaign
Be positive and make it fun!

56. Altogether now…
• The benefit of peer support
• The kick-up-the-bum of a challenge
• Going on a journey, together

57. We’ve been impressed…
• Time commitment
• Ability to keep on going
• Range of ideas
• Amount of money raised!!

58. We’ve learnt…
• Lead time for strategy and
planning
• Clear timetable vs being
responsive
• Ability to draw in experts
• Time commitment!

59. We’ll be gradually uploading resources
and learning to…
www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/crowdfunding2012

60. And the winner is…
• The organisation who went on the longest learning
journey
• The organisation who acted upon their learning,
developing as they went
• Who shared and interacted with us and with
participants
• Who kept up momentum, even when things were
tough

61. …we’ll tell you later