7 Tips for Crowdfunding Your Next Idea

Blaz Jemc from our Slovenia community stopped by our meet-up in Toronto to share his tips on crowdfunding. 

Crowdfunding is becoming one of the fastest growing funding mediums supporting innovative ideas, entrepreneurs, startups, and meaningful projects.

Blaz is the COO and Co-Founder of TravelStarter, a startup and global crowdfunding platform for the tourism industry. It enables travellers to support local projects at their next destination and receive “travel perks” (like a free place to stay or free professional photographs of their trip) in exchange. It creates local and meaningful encounters, and supports sustainable and responsible businesses directly, where you travel.

Why Crowdfund?

If you have a cool project or idea, consider raising money through a well-thought out crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding not only creates a supportive community of backers behind your idea, but your business or product will like get more media exposure, press, PR, and blog coverage when you crowdfund your idea. It also a good way to test your idea on potential consumers before you invest your time and money.

Ok, I’m convinced. How do I do It?

Here are 7 tips on how to leverage the power of crowdfunding and how to prepare for your campaign.

1. Plan a pre-launch. Define your project and set your goals.

2. Create a (big) team to manage your campaign and define your roles. Bigger is better – the more hands you have to help run it the more successful it will be. Make sure everyone involved can be committed and dedicated from beginning to end.

3. Choose the right platform. Consider using smaller crowdfunding websites. Chances are they will have a smaller team and greater capability to support your project more personally. TravelStarter for example still offers one-on-one Skype calls and tailored advice on how to make each campaign more effective.

4. Get people engaged in your crowdfunding project. Share an inspiring story or create a video about your project – like Nomad-A-What, our co-working space (and new home for Travel Massive members) which was also crowdfunded using TravelStarter.

5. Use email to share your campaign. Studies show communication by newsletters or email creates more conversions than when you share on social media channels.

6. Consider offline outreach. Don’t forget you can also find potential backers by cold calling and face to face interaction. Meet and connect with others at tourism-related events.

7. Plan your post-campaign. Update your backers. Thank supporters and deliver rewards.

Cristina is the co-organizer of Travel Massive in Toronto. A TV journo turned blogger, she left traditional media for the digital world. When she is not organizing meet-ups in her city, she blogs about Europe and volunteer travel at ChasingTravel.com.