When someone comes to chat to us about their plans and fundraising goals, we always ask “how will you activate your crowd?”.
And often they turn that back on us and say “but who is my crowd” followed by “and how to I activate them”?
We say that your crowd is a mix of your family, friends, fans, and if you’re already going and growing, your customers.
How do you know if they want to pledge? You ask them. You tell them what you’re planning to do, what’s in it for them, and see if they’re interested or not.
We’ve realised over the years that there’s a real fear for founders to take the leap into crowdfunding if they don’t know if their crowd is ready for them. We’ve given lots of templates and advice in the past about building “expressions of interest” lists. But they often focus just on the funding, and not the other ways your community can support you.
So we decided to build a tool: Crowd Check.
Crowd Check is for founders who either want to run a rewards or equity based campaign, but want to check with their community before hitting go on their raise.
You’ll need to be ready to share the Crowd Check far and wide – with social posts, and individual messages, to let your crowd know you are looking to raise. You need to be clear what’s in it for them, and be ready to celebrate as the pre-committments and offers of support roll in.
How does it work?
- You email contact@pledgeme.co.nz to let us know you’d like to launch a Crowd Check.
- We’ll ask for a few images, a title, the goal, and a blurb about what the campaign will be about (and what folk get in return).
- We’ll invoice you for using the tool ($250+GST)
- We’ll launch the page
- You’ll promote it, and be able to watch the support roll in
If you decide to hit go on a crowdfund, you’ll have a community that you can email as soon as the campaign is live.
And if you decide crowdfunding isn’t the right for you right now, you can thank your community and explore the next pathway.
And our founder, Anna, is eating her own dogfood and trying the tool out. She’s completing a research trip in October 2026, and in two days had over 90% of her goal pre-committed by her crowd to support some additional domestic travel and interviews in the UK and Europe.
Check out Crowd Check (and Anna’s campaign) here: https://check.pledgeme.co.nz/
