Whoa baby! We did it! With just 30 minutes to spare, we were able to reach our $10,000 crowd funding goal and successfully closed our Indiegogo Campaign! Man oh man, we PUSHED and PUSHED for the last 60 days. Especially in the last 15! We learned a lot of valuable lessons along the way. Here are some (hopefully) helpful tips that you could maybe use if you’re planning to crowd fund in the near future:
- Have a plan: We talked about this before in our “Wait, why did I did I want to start this festival again?” post. Make sure to lay out a strategy and ask friends for their opinion. It’s not all about who you know. Having a lot of friends or knowing a lot of people is VERY different from having a lot of friends or knowing a lot of people that are able to donate. Know who to ask, when to ask and how to ask.
- Organize your contacts: Very good idea to do WAY ahead of time. Grouping everyone will help make your email blasts a little more personal. You’re not gonna email your family the same way you’re gonna email potential sponsors. We didn’t think of this till way late in the game, and when we did finally do it…it took forever! Organizing 1000+ contacts is not cute when you’re trying to do it all in one day.
- Really think about your perks: Looking back, we wish we had set up more “ticket only” options in our perk list. We thought that more was more, when really some people wanted less. We had a few messages from friends saying that they wish there was an option for only tickets…no shirts. No shirts?! But are shirts are awesome! Yes, and….they will also be available at the festival. We got some great advice from Ed White: “IndieGoGo and Kickstarter are a great place to pre-sell tickets. For a festival that does not exist yet, you should probably treat it as a pre-sale venue, and add perks for people who want to give above and beyond. I would say create an audience presale tier that lets people see the actual comedy shows for the bare minimum amount.No shirts, no extras, just coming to the show.” DUH! Why didn’t we think of that? Oh right, because we didn’t have a plan and we didn’t ask friends (see tip #1). We also wish we had reached out to more friends that can offer services or fun perks. Or maybe even plan a fundraising show. We just got too busy with the holidays. Speaking of…
- Timing is everything: I’m sure a lot of campaigns launch during the holidays and are successful, but it wasn’t the best idea for us. Not only is it a super weird time to ask people for donations for a new event, but THE HOLIDAYS ARE A BUSY TIME! I’d say we lost a good 20 days of not really pushing as hard as we could have. This takes a lot of work, so make sure you set aside time every day to reach out to your peeps.
- Emailing worked best: According to our Indiegogo Dashboard, most of our contributions came from email referrals. We email blasted groups of people, but if you have time to reach out to individuals…even better!
- Follow up: You will have people that say they want to donate, but haven’t gotten around to it yet…FOLLOW UP! Chances are they have lives too and while contributing to your campaign is on their to-do list…picking up their kids, finishing up work, catching up on Netflix is more important to them. They won’t mind a quick and friendly reminder:)
- NO BE SHAME: We were a little hesitant at first. We didn’t want to bug people too much, but that’s what you’re supposed to do. Well, not bug them, but you’re supposed to reach out to people. In the final hour, we were full out with messaging, following up, reminding, etc. You gotta do whatcha gotta do!
Thank you to everyone who donated and/or shared our campaign! We really appreciate your help. We seriously couldn’t do this without you all! We’re super excited to get everything together.
We look forward to seeing you at the festival!!!