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Crowdfunding is all the rage these days. From newfangled technologies to heartwarming causes, it seems like everyone who’s raising money for anything is talking about crowdfunding. But for the nonprofit sector, this new way to get to people and funds can seem overwhelming—especially if your organization has been around for awhile and developed a strong cohort of traditional donors.

Nonetheless, there is little doubt that donor dollars are moving toward crowdfunding. Millennials are one group gravitating toward donating via crowdfunding. That’s why any modern development plan should include a plan for crowdfunded donations.

Today, let’s spend some time to learn the basics of nonprofit crowdfunding.

What Is Crowdfunding?

It’s the process of raising money for a project or venture from a large number of people. This is typically done online and is based around a defined timeline. For example, you want to raise money to build a school in 6 months, so you create a crowdfunding campaign aimed at raising a certain dollar amount within that time.

For us in nonprofits, crowdfunding can often be a great fit for a one-time project based around a timeline. Some organizations have had success raising operating funds, but generally, you need the story of a particular project to drive people to give.

Why Crowdfund?

Because more and more donor dollars are showing up there every day. If you don’t get the hang of this, you’ll risk losing out. Crowdfunding is great for highlighting a one-time project or need at your organization. It also serves the dual purpose of raising money AND awareness. These examples from the best nonprofit social media campaigns of 2013 are great templates for how you could tell your story in a campaign.

This is New to Me, I’m Scared!

Don’t be. Yes, it’s a new trend in giving, but once you go down this road, you’ll find that it’s very similar to donor drives you’re used to: make people part of something larger than themselves, tell a great story and make the ask.

Okay, You’ve Sold Me. But Where Do I Begin?

First, you need to choose a crowdfunding platform that best fits your campaign. There are a lot of them out there and you don’t necessarily want to go with one just because it has tons of people. Make sure to do your research to find the best platform for your organization. Different crowdfunding sites to check out include GoFundMe, Indiegogo, Kickstarter and WonderWe, among others.

You’ll need to sit down with your team and get very clear about how much you want to raise, who you’ll invite into the campaign and how you want to reach them.

Next week, we’ll take this understanding of nonprofit crowdfunding and check out some awesome resources that will help you build your first campaign. For today, join the conversation by telling us in the comment section how you’ve tried crowdfunding at your organization, if at all.

The post The Answers to Your Crowdfunding Questions appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

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Crowdfunding is a major buzzword these days, especially in the nonprofit space. There’s good reason for this: It’s projected to become a $90 billion industry by 2025 and 30 percent of that money will be directed toward charitable causes.

So, if you’re not building crowdfunding into your development plan, that’s a conversation you’ll want to start having yesterday. Also, if you hope to tap millennial donors, crowdfunding and social are two of the biggest ways they’re donating nowadays. In sum, this is one train you definitely want to be on.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll spend time walking us through tips and tools for running a solid crowdfunding campaign at our nonprofits. We’ll check out some case studies, hear stories from nonprofits who have successfully crowdfunded and get you tools you need to start your first campaign.

As a start, let’s chat about the power of storytelling to move people to action. Turns out, storytelling is just as important with crowdfunding as with any other donation campaign. This is good news for us, because we’re already used to sharing the stories of the communities and people we impact. In crowdfunding, we’re simply presenting those stories to a new audience. Let’s check out five rules you should follow when crafting the story of your campaign.

1) Have a character.

This doesn’t necessarily need to be one person. It could be a family, neighborhood, etc. The point is, you have a character in your story that others can connect with.

2.) Share a problem that character encounters.

E.g. Loss of a job, home, income, etc.

3.) Make your donor a ‘guide’ in your story.

Your character has just encountered a problem—it is here that you want to openly share how your prospective donor can help them through. For example, I used to recruit volunteers into a refugee resettlement agency, so after I explained that refugees lack furniture, I showed prospective donors our warehouse of furniture and explained how they could help us furnish lives as refugees sought to create homes for their families.

4.) Give them a plan.

You have a character, that character has a problem and you’ve shown your donor how they can help. Now you need to get specific and lay out exactly what their contribution will do. For example: $25 = supplies for 1 child and $50 = supplies for a whole family.

5.) Call them to action.

I cannot stress the importance of this enough! Once you’ve told your story, and shown your donor how they can be a part of it, you have to call them to action! Don’t be afraid to go as far as saying things like, “When do you think you can start helping our families?” You are committed to the people you serve and once you’ve told a beautiful story you shouldn’t be afraid to boldly ask others to become a part of it. Here’s an example story from an crowdfunding campaign that raised $70k for a small nonprofit:

The rules of story should be followed in any campaign, but they are especially important in crowdfunding because crowdfunders want to connect with something that is bigger than themselves. Join the conversation by commenting on the following: how have you used the rules of storytelling in your campaigns?

The post The Power of Storytelling in Your Crowdfunding Campaign appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

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Over the years, I’ve been very involved with volunteerism. I devoted a year of my life to AmeriCorps, worked for 3 years at my college’s community service office, helped indigenous farmers in Peru and was involved with Habitat for Humanity and refugee resettlement for a number of years.

But then in 2012, I reached a deep personal crossroads. I was reflecting on my long resume of community service and a lingering question haunted me: had my service actually transformed lives? The answer was no. I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t land on one moment where I had truly shifted the course of someone else’s life. Had I learned a great deal about myself? Yes. Learned a great deal about injustice? Yes. But transforming a life? No.

This was a tough realization for me. Service should be transformative for both the servant and the served, but I was missing the mark. My response was to completely reassess what serving others truly means. I concluded that transformative service is not about the number of causes we give to, the number of dollars we donate, or the amount of time we can brag about volunteering. Rather, it is about dedicating ourselves to just one cause. By dedicating myself to one cause, I’m able to serve families more deeply, understand my cause more fully and enjoy a much richer experience at the nonprofit I volunteer with.

I cannot deny that my experiences volunteering at many places were important for me. In fact, it’s really the only way I was able to zero in on my central cause. In the long run, however, we nonprofit professionals need to be focused on bringing in recurring volunteers because this is the only way to truly transform our communities.

If everyone gave 5-7 hours per month to just one cause, we would change the world.

I’ll give you an example: When I realized in 2012 that my service was having minimal impact, I decided that I was going to focus 7 hours serving each month with just one organization, Jewish Vocational Services (JVS). JVS helps incoming refugees acclimate to life in the U.S. The reality is, the number of families coming far exceeds the capacity of JVS support staff, so they need volunteers to help families navigate tasks such as renting an apartment, grocery shopping, and making appointments. For refugees thrust into a strange country because of circumstances beyond their control, even the small things become daunting. I knew I could help, so I work with the same family each week. I teach them English, help them navigate appointments, and generally make sure they aren’t lost in a system they don’t understand. I believe their lives will be transformed because I’m consistently involved.

By serving one cause, I build a relationship of trust and deep friendship with one family.

Because I only focus on them, we can really get into our English lessons or a cultural outing. My volunteering is focused, it’s deliberate, and I will be a part of their lives for the foreseeable future. I know in my heart I’ll make a far deeper, far more meaningful impact in their lives than the micro-impacts I was making while volunteering here there and everywhere.

What if we all did this? What if everyone had one cause they devoted 7 hours (and heck, while I’m at it, 5% of their resources) to each week? We could change our country! Every kid struggling to read could have a reading partner every week who could be depended on. No refugee family would have to arrive to the U.S. only to be defeated by systems they simply do not understand. Most importantly, this would do more to bridge the gap between races, between the rich and the poor, between refugee and resident than just about anything else out there.

5 hours. 1 cause that has meaning for you. Enough to change the world.

How can you implement this at your nonprofit?

​I won’t lie, it can be a real challenge to get people to commit to long term volunteering like this, but the good news is, once you get them started on it, they’ll be hooked. The key is in getting them through those first 2-3 months. For example, I currently serve as a Big Brother. I’ve had my little for a few months and the first 2 months were challenging for me. I struggled with communication, planning our activities, and how I was really making an impact. Thankfully, I had a great case worker who had told me before my service began that this would happen, that it was normal, and that it would pass. With his guidance, I was able to move through those first few months into a beautiful service connection. Thus, as you start recruiting volunteers for sustained service, be sure that you are up front about the challenges they may experience at first. It is also critical that you have a clearly defined role for them. For example, Big Brothers has a very specific monthly time commitment, they gave me a title (I’m a ‘Big’), and they offer activity suggestions. By doing this, you will help your volunteer understand their responsibilities and stay involved for enough time to allow them to experience the joy and impact through serving one cause.

The post How to Change the World in Five Hours or Less appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the launch of my own social venture: Social Change Nation. It was born in an all-night whiteboard session and marked the beginning of one of the most exciting and terrifying journeys of my life. All at once my schedule was my own. I was free to live my dreams and free to fail or succeed dramatically. Today I’m going to give you a completely candid accounting of where that journey has taken me. Saddle up, because it’s a wild ride full of the ups and downs that you would expect with the launch of any venture.

Quarter 1, 2014

I was at the tail-end of a grad program at the University of Kansas, and amazingly frustrated with the complete lack of action at a larger university like mine. I have a bias for action, and it seemed to me that we would just beat an idea to death in an effort to understand every nuance without ever really acting on any of the research we were doing. I was studying some pretty cool stuff and interviewing many social entrepreneurs around the world. What I was finding was life changing for me—businesses were beginning to dramatically shift to a triple bottom line of people, planet and profit.

Consumers were overwhelmingly demanding that businesses make a dollar AND a difference, and these companies were responding in some dramatic ways. So, I approached my advisor with a desire to build a website that would touch an entire generation of new business leaders, and get them tools they needed to build these kinds of businesses. The reaction was as you might expect it to be:

“This won’t pass the research compliance board” 

“What about this angle? That angle?” 

“Several professors already did an experiment on this—they’re working on it…”  

But I didn’t let that stop me. Instead, I spent the whole night scribbling out the framework for what would become Social Change Nation. I had really never pulled an ‘all-nighter’ in all my years of college, but this was different—this was me taking action. I knew that I could build THE toolbox for people seeking to build successful social ventures, and nothing was going to stand in my way.

Quarter 2, 2014:

This part of my journey saw me creating my company name (Social Change Nation) our tagline (Empowering Businesses that Make a Dollar AND a Difference), and laying the foundation of all the tech tools for my website and podcast. I was on my own, building my own movement, and creating an entire community around an idea. To say that it was exhilarating doesn’t even begin to do it justice. But this period was also full of frustration. I knew that I had a message inside me that would change the world, but the realities of our connected and cluttered world meant that in order to express my art I had to learn all kinds of new skills. I barely had a Twitter account, knew nothing about websites, despised Facebook, and don’t even get me started on LinkedIn. But all of a sudden these were tools that were absolutely vital to my chances for success. I had to learn them, so I swallowed my pride and started my education over again (not really, but sort of).

Lucky for me, my hometown of Kansas City is home to one of the most vibrant entrepreneurial communities in the U.S. I got myself into the Kansas City Startup Village, a grassroots community that put all kinds of startups within ten blocks of me. As a result, when I ran into tech issues I didn’t understand (which happened about every 10 minutes in those days…) I was never more than a few blocks away from the answer. And this paved the way to one of the most vital lessons I learned in those days: you’ve got to get yourself into the community. The startup world saved me from myself in those days and helped me to lay the critical foundations I needed. On a side note, that summer also saw me meeting Brittain, the girl of my dreams. She got me, supported me and was an entrepreneur herself. In her, God blessed me with everything I’ve ever hoped for. I’m not exaggerating when I say these are the kinds of things that happen when you work in your passion.

Quarter 3, 2014:

This was the most frustrating part of my journey. See, I had done an awesome job of branding and building the machine that is my business, but I had done a horrible job of getting the fuel that would drive it. By ‘fuel’ I mean I had built an awesome venture but no one was seeing it, and I didn’t even have a “buy/donate button” anywhere. People couldn’t even do business with me if they wanted to!

Looking back now, I have no idea what I was thinking. I believe this happens to a lot of us because it’s fun building an idea, working in your passion and getting excited about all those awesome possibilities. What very few of us get excited about is the tough stuff: convincing people to listen to my podcast, sign on to my newsletter and buy my product. My error in this stage was getting distracted with the bigger picture of building and utterly failing to bring in the customers that would keep the machine running.

I had to jump ship for a few and work somewhere else because I had forgotten the cardinal rule: you work for the people you serve. They don’t work for you, and their job is not to support your dream or to find you. Provide awesome value for them, find them, get it in front of them in the right way and keep nurturing that relationship. If you can’t do this—if you can’t market tastefully and sell effectively, then you’ll never be able to express your art.

Current Stage:

It’s been a whirlwind year. I still know I’m at work on what will become my life’s work, but I’ve pivoted in some dramatic ways. My business is getting healthier, I have buy buttons now and my audience is growing every day. This has happened because I’ve refocused on the metrics that really matter right now.

Peter Drucker always said, “what gets measured gets managed” and that’s absolutely been true for me. The minute I started actively watching my email signups (my lifeblood) and my podcast downloads (my other lifeblood) I started taking the action steps I needed to take to get them ticking up. And not because I’m some heartless bean counter, to the contrary, I’m a firm believer in Social Entrepreneurship and want it to spread. But that’ll never happen if I don’t get Social Change Nation in front of the person who dreams of having a cause-based startup. It’ll never happen if I can’t reach the startup social entrepreneur who needs the tools to make a purposeful and profitable impact with their startup.

So that’s the story of my first year in social venturing. It’s been the most exhilarating journey of my entire life and I don’t plan on leaving it anytime soon. If you take anything from my story take this: if you spend more than 2-3 months building your venture without spreading the word, you’ve taken too long. Get a minimally viable foundation up and then get out and start hustling.

Your message and purpose are too beautiful to keep to yourself. You’re going to learn a ton by getting out there and getting your nose bloodied anyway. So go forth and be bold, my friend.

The post Lessons Learned in the First Year of My Social Venture appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.

Let’s be honest here—all of us in the nonprofit space have moments when we seriously question the difference we’re really making. Being on the front lines of social justice means that we are constantly bombarded with injustice, challenge and scarcity at a level that few others know.

Now, of course our passion and our love for our communities ultimately sees us through—but there is no denying that we are prime candidates for this type of despair. So what to do?

I’ve been working on the front lines of social change for around 10 years now—and over that course of time, I’ve had my share of ‘doubting’ moments… but, one day, I finally decided enough was enough. I decided it was time to write myself a message for those days when I doubted my power to spark change.

What follows is the letter I wrote myself on a day of particularly strong doubts, and it now hangs on my wall for me to see it any time I start questioning my power to spark change. I want to share it with you today in hopes that it will also help you as you run into those inevitable moments.

Josh,

I know you’re feeling doubtful today—so I need you to read this now, and remember just why it is you do what you do for others…

If you’ve changed one life, you’ve changed the world. I know the world faces massive challenges, and they can seem overwhelming, but the fact is—if you can change the trajectory of just one life, you’ve changed the trajectory of the world. Remember this the next time you think the world is beyond saving.

It’s more about consistency than the amount of time.  In social work, you will often feel like there is not enough time to solve all the world’s problems–and there isn’t! It’s a good thing that consistency is what really matters. So remember—whether you’re choosing to spend an hour or 10 hours with a family you’re serving, just be honest about what you can consistently commit to.

Focus on what you’re best at. You need to be sure that, in every way possible, you are seeking to serve others in your areas of strength. Far too many change agents burn out because they try to be all things to all people—don’t do this. Know what you excel at, and serve the world in those areas.

Keep things right with yourself, so that you can be right for others. If you get burnt out by trying to be all things to all people, you’ll be no things to no people.    

Keep it Real. I know at times, it may appear that the struggles our families face are insurmountable—but this is a marathon we’re in, not a sprint. Be sure to laugh along the way, to sing, to cry, dance randomly and never take yourself too seriously. The people you serve will love you for this.

We would love to hear your insight. What are some similar strategies you’ve used to remind yourself of your ‘why’?

The post How to Pick Yourself Up When You Feel Like You’re Not Making a Difference appeared first on Nonprofit Hub.