How to plan a major nonprofit crowdfunding campaign

For nonprofits, running a major crowdfunding campaign (over £100k) requires careful planning to succeed. You’ll need organized processes, a coordinated team, appropriate tools, clear messaging, and connections with key influencers.

Campaign Team

Goals:

• Ensure proper campaign resourcing
• Establish communication patterns for the team

Recommendations:

A dedicated full-time campaign manager is essential for at least three months before and one month after the campaign (ideally three months post-campaign). Strategic expert input should be secured for 6-8 days monthly during preparation, plus five days of full-time training before planning begins.

Structure team interactions as follows:

• Daily stand-ups: One to two minutes per person, held standing to keep meetings under ten minutes
• Weekly check-ins: One-hour meetings on the first working day of the week to review progress and identify longer-term issues

Next Steps:

• Appoint a campaign manager
• Decide on external expert support
• Agree on a team interaction plan

Campaign Messaging

Goal: Establish one clear, consistent message across all communication channels.

Recommendations:

Hold a half-day to full-day workshop with key team members to brainstorm messaging. Review organizational mission, vision, and values alongside campaign aims. One person collates suggestions into simple statements about intentions, ambition, philosophy, and values, then presents back for group approval.

Create supporter materials including:

• Four to five key sentences expressing campaign goals
• Social media hashtags and suggested messages
• One-page campaign documents
• Email message templates
• Campaign branding and color schemes
• Campaign imagery
• Campaign video

Publish these materials in an easily accessible location for all relevant parties.

Next Steps:

• Decide who will lead workshops
• Run the workshops
• Create campaign materials
• Share and distribute materials

Campaign Tools

Goals:

• Keep the project team connected on key issues
• Alert team members to important events or opportunities
• Coordinate activities with minimal overhead
• Track progress with accountability and visibility

Recommendations:

Use web and mobile tools to minimize software installation. Recommended tools include:

1. Slack, for team discussion and synchronization
2. Appear.in, for group video conferencing
3. Trello, for simple project management
4. HubSpot or PipeDrive, for managing major donor, influencer, and press pipelines
5. Dropbox, for sharing campaign materials

Setting Your Goals

Goals:

• Determine a sensible initial campaign target
• Establish “stretch goals”
• Decide on all-or-nothing versus keep-it-all messaging

Recommendations:

Use both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Top-down analysis answers: “what funds are required for this project?” Bottom-up analysis asks: “how much could we realistically raise from our network?”

Analyze your network to determine feasibility. Use simulation tools to create funding scenarios and highlight key challenges. Create aspirational targets based on top-down goals, such as:

• If we raise $250k: we will run the opening exhibition
• If we raise $500k: we will open a new building wing

Next Steps:

• Perform network analysis
• Test campaign simulation tools
• Create a top-down target table
• Evaluate overlap and decide on goals

Influencer Communications

Goals:

Identify influencers, determine how to reach them, clarify desired actions, and establish next steps for engagement.

Recommendations:

Identify key team members likely to interface with potential influencers across different categories (press, celebrity, communities, etc.). Run a meeting to identify each potential influencer and assign next actions with specific deadlines. The campaign manager collates engagement outcomes and defines subsequent actions. Remove potential influencers from the list if no clear next action can be identified.

Next Steps:

• Establish the key influencer engagement team and secure buy-in
• Organize kick-off meeting(s)
• Run meetings and agree on next actions