Mason
The key to success of a crowdfunding India campaign lies in the planning and strategizing phase. Our blog sufficiently covers tips and tricks on maximizing your marketing strategy, social media communications, your campaign page, press coverage, and offline engagements. Today we’d like to discuss the importance of a good fund utilization plan. As a crowdfunder, having the perfect fundraising goal can actually make or break your campaign. If you’re raising funds on the internet, you need to be prepared to share all your plans with your supporters. Complete transparency and genuinity is a must to gain the trust of potential donors, and this will show through your fund utilization plan. After all, people need to see that their money is being put to good use.
So we at Impact Guru have made a short guide to help you create a fund utilization plan that you must share on your crowdfunding India campaign page.
Understand your goals
Part of understanding your goals means having a clear idea of where you are, and where you want to be in the short-term and long-term. The best way to do this is to ask yourself the following questions:
- What are you trying to accomplish?
- How many lives are you going to have an impact on?
- How much money do you need?
Establish a realistic fundraising target
Determining the perfect fundraising goal can be quite tricky. If your target is too high the donor will assume his/her contribution won’t make enough of a difference. And if your target is too low, he/she may think you’ll be able to raise money without their help. This is why it’s essential to know exactly how much you need, and stick to that figure when starting your campaign.
Plan a budget
Surely a budget will be very different for different categories of crowdfunding campaigns. However, we’ve listed out some common expenses involved in most nonprofit initiatives:
- Purchase of certain products, medicines or food items
- Pay for fees such as medical or educational
- Purchase of raw materials or equipment for a product or service
- Marketing and advertising expenses
- Labour
- Transport
- Overheads
Account for cost of crowdfunding
One aspect that many campaigners tend to forget is accounting for the expenses involved in actually running a crowdfunding India campaign. Now most websites such as Impact Guru allow you to start a campaign for free (barring a minimal service fee), but you may still chose to have rewards for your donors, or organize offline activities. If you do have such expenses, they must be accounted for in your budget.
Share your plans with your supporters
Lastly and most importantly, don’t be afraid to share your fund utilization plans with your supporters. When they get to see a clear strategy involved, they’ll trust you more, and be more open to making a donation. Hence we encourage complete honesty and transparency by campaigners.
We hope this guide helps you plan your fund utilization plan as you launch your crowdfunding campaign with Impact Guru.
