Charlotte here, projects and marketing lead for PledgeMe. I support the project crowdfunders to reach their goals. It can be a roller coaster. But, some factors elevate people’s chances of success.
Meet Jessica from Empathy Angels
Today I want to tell you about the Empathy Angels project crowdfund. I’ve worked with hundreds of project crowdfunds since then, but this one stuck with me. Not because she raised a huge amount of funds, or hit her deadline within the first 24 hours, but because she didn’t. Things were looking rather bleak there for a moment, but she kept at it, and ended up passing her funding goal just in the nick of time!
Empathy Angels co-founder Jessica White is a passionate Nonviolent Communication (NVC) – also known as Compassionate Communication – practitioner who was on a mission to launch a new online service called Empathy Angels, in January 2023.
The Empathy Angels are a team of New Zealanders who – through the practice of NVC – were personally experiencing the power of giving and receiving empathy with people in their lives, and they dreamed of reaching more people.
They wanted to make empathy sessions available via Zoom to the New Zealand public, and eventually the world, thanks to the online nature of the service.
Jessica and her team set out to raise $37,000 to cover the costs of six months of free sessions, plus a few other costs, including our success fee.
In exchange for pledges, Jessica offered 19 different rewards, including gratitude notes, gift vouchers, retreats and gift packs. Jessica said their ‘self-connection surprise gift pack’, which included a collection of items donated from business, including balms, oils and jewelry, went down particularly well.
Jessica’s emotional roller coaster
From the start Jessica was honest about how she felt, using the NVC sessions to process her emotions. In my opinion, this was one of the reasons they were successful – Jessica had great emotional support around her, which enabled her to keep going, despite feeling very challenged at times.
Jessica used reels on Instagram to share her crowdfunding journey. This was great as it enabled her crowd to remain easily connected with her as the crowdfund unfolded.
In this Instagram reel Jessica introduced her team.
In this Instagram reel she danced around celebrating having reached the first 10k. That was on the 6th of January and she still had over two weeks to go.
The scary middle part
Jessica was now in the hard part. The middle of her crowdfund. We know that it’s here that many people struggle because pledges slow down.
But she kept posting inspiring reels, here’s one where she talks about the benefits of Empathy Angel’s service.
Five days to go, and 32% raised
Five days before Jessica White’s crowdfunding campaign closed, she still had $25,000 to go to reach her funding goal of $37,000. That felt like a very big cliff to scale. Although she had 99 pledges, which was very validating, some pledges started at $10. While every single dollar counted, this meant she needed many more pledges to reach her goal.
We’d been in touch, having regular online meetings, and on that day I emailed her, offering her lots of advice, including the following:
“Keep your tone of voice positive, celebratory and optimistic, and stay focused on the vision you want to bring into this world …
As you say, for some people $25,000 is a lot of money, for others, it’s small change.
Harness the power of deadline magic in all your comms: Five days to go! Four days to go! Three days to go! Then 12 hours to go! Five hours to go!
Take a break and go into nature to clear your mind sometimes.
99 people is an amazing number of pledgers, if you keep updating them daily, in a positive, excited kind of way, you never know what might come out of the woodwork.
Keep going Jessica, just keep going and putting your messaging out there right until the end.”
And she kept going, posting messages like this on Instagram.
and this …
The day before her campaign closed she posted this super inspiring reel with upbeat music, celebrating the comments of the pledgers.
Other ways she activated her crowd were by posting updates on her campaign page, sharing updates on the Empathy Angels Facebook page, speaking to people one-on-one, getting media attention, and sending emails.
Deadline magic is real
On the final day of her campaign, Jessica went live on Instagram, explaining Empathy Angels and inviting people to pledge to her crowdfund.
She also posted this song ‘Don’t give up on me’ on Facebook, which is one of the most amazing YouTube videos I’ve ever watched. Seriously, if you need to feel good about not giving up, watch this:
From 7 am on the final day of her crowdfund, Jessica received $19,313 in pledges, ranging in value from $10 to $10,000, taking her past her funding goal of $37,000 to reach $38,108. That’s over 50% of the funds – raised in 10 hours.
At the time I was on holiday, driving up the West Coast of the South Island. I kept pulling over to refresh my phone as I watched the pledges pouring in. It was deeply thrilling.
In a post titled ‘Gratitude’ on Instagram Jessica said:
“Team. Did that just truly happen? 💥
If that’s not a collective surge then we don’t know what is!
🙌🌊
So many things to say, yet in this moment, tiredness calls for simplicity.
You know what’s most alive in our hearts?
GRATITUDE
To each and every one of you.”
Empathy Angels continues to this day. You can check them out and book in your own NVC session (you’ve gotta experience it!) here.
Four useful things Jessica did to reach her crowdfunding goal:
- Jessica didn’t give up – she listened to feedback, implemented ideas, and kept going
- She had a crowd around her – who both supported her and pushed the crowdfund out to their crowds
- She showed up online and shared the story of her crowdfunding campaign, honestly
- She and her team genuinely wanted to make a positive impact, drawing in strangers who believed in their cause.
Thanks for tuning in, if you’d like to talk about your crowdfunding project you can book in a chat with with me via my Calendly link here.
Charlotte 🙂
