It’s not a new concept! Memorials and worship places have been funded and built in by small donations for years. In the recent years Indian startup story has witnessed more twists than before. If you are also a part of this startup story, crowdfunding can be the way of connecting investors and bring your story to life.

Here’s that how does it work?

Selecting the project and building a story

Launching a new product or starting a campaign should be specific with a perceived outcome. Your campaign should be time bound. Try to make a complete story that would appeal people to contribute in your product. Make them understand why your project is unique and what problem you are solving that will compel your potential backers to fund you.

Mount a funding budget

Set up a specific budget you need and be clear where it will go. Be precise about meeting up your targets as it allows the investors to know the licitness and credibility of your project. It shows that people have been interested in backing up your project,

The budget should include the commission fees of your crowdfunding platform and the reward budget.

Choosing a Platform

It is the one of the most important and crucial step in launching your crowdfunding campaign. It depends upon what type of project you are launching and what your goals are. There are loads of platforms to decide from such as Milaap, Indigogo, Catapooolt etc. which offers you a good stuff of audience.  You need to decide between:-

Reward and donations based – Offering ‘rewards’ and perks for your backers is always good. You could give them gifts and perks based on how much contribution people pledge.

‘All or nothing’ or ‘Keep it all’- Some platforms keep the rule of ‘ All or nothing ‘ where if you don’t meet your target you will have nothing. And platform like Catapooolt offers you to get all the money minus their fees, even if you fail to meet your target.

Prepare a pitch and promote your campaign

Prepare an overwhelming pitch about your campaign telling who you are ,what’s your idea, why you started that will revoke the interest of your potential pledgers. Have an impressive pitch video catering a personalized strife to the viewers. You have to make people informed about your crowdfunding campaign. Create a coordinated online social media campaign with the help of your crowdfunding platform. Reach out to media and people to have more coverage to your campaign. Encourage them to back up your campaign by hosting an event or through any other engagement. It is not easy to arouse people’s interest unless you give your full commitment to your campaign. Be passionate enough to turn your dream into reality.

Follow Feedback

It is your backers which helps you to climb the mount. Taking your customers feedback seriously is really significant. Getting reviews and making improvements is essential before launching the campaign. Keep in touch with your supporters and keep them modemised about your progress. Thanks them and let them feel that their contribution is making a difference.

Its time to capitalize your venture and let your business grow through crowdfunding. The arise of crowdfunding has provided an alternative to traditional ways of funding. It is an effective way to help entrepreneurs in reaching their dreams. The increasing social media trends inculcates perfect conditions for crowdfunding as a fundraising tool to prosper in the capital market. So fund your project and go crowd out loud!

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The funds raised through this campaign will be used to pay for free theater screenings of “Captain Marvel” for young women and girls. ‘Send Girls to See Captain Marvel’ campaign has already hit $61,000. Do you know what is the amazing thing that has happened? The target hit is three times its original goal and is still counting.

NBCUniversal’s E! News and Ellen DeGeneres’ “The Ellen Show” each donated $ 10,000. Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe also donated $2,500 taking the donors tally to 1,170.

With DC’s Wonder Women release, gone are the days when female superheroes were considered a rare exception rather than a norm. Birds of Prey will be DC’s second female superhero movie which is bringing back Suicide Squad’s Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn.

The #CaptainMarvelChallenge crowdfunding initiative has been organized by We Have Stories in partnership with Girls Inc. of Greater Los Angeles, which serves girls in Title I schools in South Compton, Los Angeles and Watts. These are the same guys who were behind the tremendous success of #BlackPantherChallenge, which successfully raised more than $1 million. Isn’t that a staggering number? That campaign provided free screenings of “Black Panther” for 73,000 children. Amazing right?

We Tell Stories and Girls Inc. LA says, “Everyone should have an opportunity to see women in roles they can aspire to one day be, roles that show women as strong, smart and bold. From a teacher to a fighter pilot — or a superhero. This is an opportunity to continue to empower girls to be just that.” A supercool step towards women empowerment.

Funds collected through the campaign will help rent out theaters for “Captain Marvel” showings and to purchase tickets, ie. free tickets to nearly 2,000 kids. If we look at the cost break down, it will cost $13 per child ticket, $17 per chaperone ticket and $13 in refreshments per child. Additional funds raised shall go toward We Have Stories and Girls Inc. LA to support different programming efforts.

Sources:

‘Captain Marvel’ Crowdfunding Campaign to Hold Free Theater Screenings for Girls Tops $60,000 – Variety

Send Girls to See Captain Marvel – gofundme

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This is what happened 

Two men entered the store and within a minute or so walked out the front door wheeling a Specialized S-Works Epic valued at $10,000. Thereafter they put it in the bed of a GMC Sierra pickup driven by a woman.

Dominic Galenti, InCycle’s co-owner, witnessed it all.

Dominic said, “Megan saw it and ran after them. I don’t know what she was doing. She’s 4-foot-9, and she tried to jump in the car to stop them just like a little pit bull. They pushed her out and she was dragged and then literally run over by the rear wheel of the truck.”

In the mean time, fellow manager Raul Ureno jumped into a car with a customer and pursued the truck. Raul retrieved the bike from the truck bed when the truck got stuck in traffic but was not able to break through the windows.

Megan suffered a broken hip, ribs and thumb, foot, a fractured skull and a concussion. The thumb and foot injuries required surgery and so to help with the medical expenses a crowdfunding campaign was launched where people showered their love for Megan.

Dominic said, “People interested in donating to the crowdfunding campaign for Rodriguez can search for “The Mighty Megan Rehab Fund” on GoFundMe. The campaign hit its crowdfunding goal of $25,000 within a day.

Domnic futher added, “It’s going to be a long process for her and she’s in a lot of pain, but she’s so tough. The first thing she said to me is how is everyone doing, and did we get the bike back. Her spirits were so good for all she’s been through. It’s amazing.”

Dominic has also offered a $10,000 reward for anyone who comes forward with information leading to the suspects’ arrest.

Sources:

Crowdfunding campaign benefits store manager run over in theft attempt – Bicycle Retailer

The post Crowdfunding Campaign To Support Megan Rodriguez, Who Was Robbed & Ran Over In Broad Daylight, Smashes Target Within A Day appeared first on Desiredwings.

As per the Election Commission of India, the permissible expenditure limit for Lok Sabha elections is Rs 70 lakh. Atishi Marlena, AAP’s East Delhi parliamentary seat in-charge, is betting big on this and has already launched a crowdfunding campaign on Wednesday, 6 February, which has successfully raised Rs 19 Lakh. As per the party leaders, the campaign shall continue online with a target to raise Rs 70 lakh.

AAP has nominated in-charges on six of the seven Lok Sabha constituencies in Delhi. They now are expected to be soon declared as the official candidates of the party in the upcoming elections, reported PTI.

Yashwant Sinha, Javed Jaffrey and Jignesh Mevani are some of the early contributors among others.

Yashwant Sinha, former Indian politician tweeted a video appreciating, “Atishi’s efforts have dramatically improved the condition of Delhi’s government schools. Someone like her needs to have a voice in Parliament. I appeal to the people of East Delhi to vote for her and elect her to the Lok Sabha.”

Delhi Dy CM @msisodia's ex Advisor @AtishiAAP has been instrumental in transforming Delhi's govt schools, and will contest the Lok Sabha election from East Delhi. People like her need to be in Parliament! आतिशी जी को मेरा पूरा समर्थन है! #ISupportAtishi https://t.co/8PWNujUK5d pic.twitter.com/ELpm57vbKV

— Yashwant Sinha (@YashwantSinha) February 6, 2019

A short film showing Atishi’s efforts towards bringing about change in Delhi’s government schools as the former advisor to Education Minister Manish Sisodia was also released as a part of the ongoing campaign.

Do not miss this short film on @AtishiAAP's story of making change happen in Delhi's government schools.

Atishi needs your support in the 2019 Lok Sabha election. Will you invest in India's future? #ISupportAtishihttps://t.co/ZpbfuUgLiQ pic.twitter.com/UK05uRmg9I

— AAP (@AamAadmiParty) February 6, 2019

You can witness the support Atishi is getting from the crowd with  #ISupportAtishi on Twitter.

Fundraising in politics is the new sexy

Aam Aadmi Party ran a successful crowdfunding campaign called “Donate to AAP” in 2015,

BJP had also launched a micro-funding campaign through the NaMo app in October 2018.

In the recently concluded Karnataka elections, Congress too crowdfunded its campaign for a candidate from Molakalmuru.

Sources:

Ahead of 2019 Elections, Atishi Marlena Begins Crowdfunding Drive – The Quint

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It was Salasky and her online platform CrowdJustice that helped change the face of Brexit. The campaign run by the name “Article 50 Challenge by Liz Webster” did the magic. It was then, Supreme Court decided in 2017 that Article 50 should be triggered by parliament rather than royal prerogative i.e MPs had to agree to start the process.

This is what Professor A. C. Grayling, Master had to say on the subject.

“Article 50 Challenge by Liz Webster“ Brexit is built on sand. When we look past the rhetoric and hype about the Will of the People and examine the facts and events that led to Brexit, we see that the Article 50 process was not followed properly and that our Article 50 notification is predicated on a decision that has no basis in law. Despite what many people were led to believe, Parliament has never delegated the withdrawal decision to the people and has never made the withdrawal decision itself. With no constitutionally valid decision, the process is invalid and illegal.”

Salasky says it was while working on a major project focusing on online dispute resolution that gave her insight into how difficult it can be for people to speak to lawyers and understand their legal rights. As per the figures released by the Legal Services Board in 2015 showed that 7 in 10 people with legal issues didn’t bother to pursue them.

“There were a lot of naysayers at the beginning. Law as an industry is so steeped in tradition and when you’re trying something new, that can be a huge impediment. There were some articles published around our launch saying ‘this is a very noble idea, but it will never work’.”

It has been just four years and over £10m has been raised, by 200,000 backers, for more than 500 legal cases on CrowdJustice. Isn’t that a staggering number?

More power to such innovative ways to solve problems. More power to Julia Salasky and other changemakers.

The story first published on The Big Issue.

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@World Economic Forum

Today, where women empowerment is a highly sensitive and talked about topic, crowdfunding seems like one exception where women have innate and better hold over men. As per a 2016 research conducted by Ethan Mollick of Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Jason Greenberg of NYU, shows that even though less than 8% of all VC backed companies have women co-founders, still women are 13% more likely to succeed in raising money on Kickstarter than men. They concluded that it is the support of other women, backers desire to help a community and their acknowledgement of female project creators operating in a male-dominated space are some of the factors that favour women in crowdfunding space.

As per yet another study conducted by crowdfunding platform Pledge Me Six, came out some intriguing facts addressing to the rising women success ratio in crowdfunding space as compared to man. Anna Guenther, founder of Pledge Me Six said, “half of the entrepreneurs who were seeking funding through her platform had female founders.”

Adding more credibility to such studies, Donna M. De Carolis, dean of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship at Drexel University says, “Women tend to be better conversationalists than men so they are able to better connect with the audience.”

To strengthen the facts stated above, let’s take the clock back to 2016 when Andreea Gorbatai, an assistant professor with Haas’s Management of Organizations Group, and Laura Nelson of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, published a paper, titled, “The Narrative Advantage: Gender and the Language of Crowdfunding.” The paper was concluded with an understanding that women are better at telling a story that resonates with potential investors when it comes to crowdfunding.

Andreea and Laura noted, “Online fundraising settings pose an interesting empirical puzzle: women are systematically more successful than men, an outcome contrary to offline gender inequality. We propose that this outcome is partially explained by linguistic differences between men and women in terms of the language they use, and … results support our theory, suggesting a link between micro-level linguistic choices and macro level outcomes: the institution of crowdfunding may reduce gender inequalities in the fundraising arena by benefitting the communication style of women.”

@Desiredwings

Now, even though crowdfunding platforms, digital marketing and social media have levelled up the playing field for women and men alike, it is still not all roses. Women centric crowdfunding platforms like iFundWomen, Desired Wings, Woomentum and more are making and witnessing this rise. The National Women’s Business Council report noted that, on Kickstarter, the average funding target for women was $14,552 per campaign whereas men outraced women with an average funding target of $20,282, which is a clear indication of risk aversion by women entrepreneurs. They need to believe in themselves and we all need to support them. That’s only human.

Main Image: ©Walt Disney Pictures

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