Your Christmas Crowdfunding Guide

As we venture closer to Christmas we face the inevitable task of dolling out huge amounts of cash for Christmas presents. If you’re anything like me then at some stage of the process you may feel a bit uneasy about spending so much money when there are serious issues of inequality in the world.

That is why I feel so passionately about crowdfunding for social ventures and not-for-profits. Today we’re featuring StartSomeGood, powered by passion to change the world.

If you want to feel good about the Christmas presents you buy (or ask for) then consider the StartSomeGood Christmas Guide. It means your expenditure will have meaning – the guide features products from current and past campaigners and you will know “you’ve helped passionate changemakers create a better future for their communities.”

Featuring gifts as diverse as ethical clothing, a beautiful calendar that deserves to have each image framed for lifelong enjoyment, a cookery book, inspirational cards, jewellery – I want it all!

In other news, I’ve been watching with interest the partnership of StartSomeGood and social media hub IndigenousX. Their aim is not only to crowdfund, but also extend their support base for a variety of Indigenous launched initiatives. Their first campaign was for the film Vote Yes that raised just over their funding target of $20,000. “Vote Yes aims to contribute to the conversation about equality in Australia by telling the story of the 1967 referendum on Aboriginal rights.” Well done to both StartSomeGood and IndigenousX on this fantastic crowdfunding effort. I look forward to seeing more Indigenous projects on SSG.

I spoke to Tom Dawkins, Co-founder of StartSomeGood to find out more about crowdfunding by social enterprises and what they are up to.

Crowdfundit: Why is crowdfunding such a great model for social entrepreneurs and not for profits?
Tom Dawkins: Crowdfunding is a wonderful way for non-profits and social entrepreneurs to raise funds, especially for projects traditional funders – who are historically very risk-adverse – are unwilling to support. Crowdfunding has numerous benefits: it’s the most game-like approach to fundraising, turning your supporters into donors and your donors into advocates; it’s achieves several important outcomes simultaneously, raising funds, building community, spreading your message and, if you’re a social enterprise, finding your first customers and; instead of applying for money and waiting-and-hoping, you can get started today and create your own success. And the success rate is very good compared to other approaches to fundraising (especially on StartSomeGood which has an industry-best 55% project success rate).

CFI: Are we starting to see a growth in changemakers due to crowdfunding?
TD: It’s hard to know if there’s more changemakers overall. There’s always been a huge number of people dedicated to creating better futures for their communities. The challenge however for most of these community groups is gaining initial support to get going or to grow something that is working. Australia has 600,000 non-profits and 95% of them have zero staff and operate on very minimal funding. Crowdfunding gives these organisations, along with the bigger players, a great opportunity to leverage the asset they often do have, which is credibility and connection in the community, and turn this into the funding they need to make a difference.

CFI: What does the future bring for StartSomeGood?
TD: 2014 is shaping up to be a very busy year for us. We’ve just had our first Chief Technical Officer join the team so expect to see a much faster pace of development on the site. We now offer projects in two countries – Australia and the United States – the chance to process credit card pledges and we’d like to roll this out to two new countries next year. We’re also working on a number of updates to the platform to make it easier to set up and launch campaigns while retaining our highly-supportive customer service approach. Getting the balance right between personalised human support and automated processes is key. We are also excited about growing our Crowdmatch initiatives, which sees funds raised on our platform matches by philanthropic supporters. Our Dreamstarter partnership with ING Direct which has seen them funding 15 social impact projects raising funds on StartSomeGood so far is a great example of this. We look forward to growing this partnership and to announcing several new Crowdmatch partnerships in the new year.

CFI: And how do you see the future of crowdfunding in Australia?
TD: I think crowdfunding in Australia will continue to grow in the coming years, becoming just another standard option for new projects launching or for organisational fundraising. We are in the midst of an explosion in platforms, many of them clones of what already exists, and this will inevitably consolidate in the future. We will also eventually see equity-based crowdfunding in Australia, but not next year. We believe there is room for there to be a number of leading platforms serving different communities and offering different models. Just as Pozible and Kickstarter serve the arts and design communities so to do we aim to be the leading platform for those looking to change the world.

CFI: Thanks Tom! Love your work over at StartSomeGood and look forward to seeing more projects that aim to change the world for the better!

You may also be interested in reading this post about StartSomeGood where I talked to Tom Dawkins and he shared the three important words that summed up how to increase your chances of crowdfunding success. Can you read about ten inspiring changemakers that used StartSomeGood here.

Oh, and Santa? If you’re reading this I would really love this top from Bachhara Store. Amanda Ryan was inspired to start her ethical fashion collection after the horror of the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh. She raised over $8,000 towards her venture on StartSomeGood. You can read more here and be inspired.

To explain some of what Bachhara do, from their website:

“We create these dresses with love and hope in the slums of Bangladesh with our women’s sewing circle partners; by doing this we are empowering our producers with the tools to create a brighter future for herself and her family.”

 

 

 

Interested in finding out more about crowdfunding? To read more details about crowdfunding including an extensive ‘How-to’ section, purchase a printed copy of Crowdfund it!  directly from the publisher. You can also purchase an ebook from the publisher Editia or through  ReadCloud bookseller partners, Amazon, Kobo, iBookstore, Booku, and Tomely.

Author: Anna Maguire, December 2013