Being part of a community is incredibly important to me. That sense of connection, through the good and the hard times, it keeps me afloat. Those smiles in the supermarket with people I’ve known for decades? Golden. Being part of a ‘food train’ for a family who just had a baby? I think it feeds me as much as them.
And strong community – also known as your ‘crowd’ – is like oxygen for your crowdfund. Before you even begin a crowdfunding campaign, you need a crowd, and you need to know how to communicate with them.
What do I mean by crowd? I’m referring to humans you’ve already built a connection with. As well as friends, family, and colleagues, they also can be customers, followers on social media, anyone.
Ask yourself if you can say ‘yes’ to the following three questions:
- Can you generate a list of 50 people you could ask to pledge to your crowdfund?
- Do you have a way to consistently communicate with your crowd (every day or so) during a 30 day crowdfunding campaign? For example via social media, emails, or phone calls.
- Are your crowd already aware and supportive of the project or business you’re thinking of crowdfunding?
If you can say yes to all three questions, you’re in a great position to crowdfund. If you can’t, it’s worth taking the time to build your crowd, until you can.
One person who recently built a crowd, fast, before raising her minimum funding target of $20k, in three hours, is Sasha from DoseBuddy. You can listen to a podcast about how she did that, here:
I hope this helps,
Charlotte x
