Summary Crowdfunding Infographic

As I’ve been doing some research and writing around crowdfunding for #GivingTuesday I came across the following infographic from Craig Newmark on his site craigconnects. It’s a pretty solid infographic summarizing a lot of the data from around the web. In particular, three stats and thoughts jumped out.

1. 28.26% of donors are repeat donors

I was just having coffee today with someone where we were discussing the low retention rates of crowdfunding and peer fundraising acquired donors. It used to be around the 20% mark so perhaps we are getting better at retention or perhaps people are just giving more frequently. Period.

Giving makes people happy therefore they should give more often in smaller amounts to make themselves happier (if they were rational happiness maximizers as economists believe them to be). And now with all kinds of people setting up pages and more and more projects to fund there are more opportunities to give in smaller amounts. And the cost to support multiple people and projects is increasingly small to the donor. So why not?

It also stands to reason that a donor who gives through a crowdfunding campaign or peer fundraising page would be more likely to donate the same way next time around so instead of trying to convert them to some other form of giving, why not just give them more of what they like?

2. Fundraisers who get a donation within the first 3 days of their page are more likely to meet their goal regardless of campaign length

Futility. It affects everything. Nobody wants to be a failure. Nobody wants to back a project that doesn’t get funded. Nobody wants to be the first/only one to fund a project or person. And when a fundraiser goes a few days without a donation, regardless of if they’ve tried, it makes sense that futility would start to loom a bit larger in their mind.

I’ve seen some community managers recommend making small donations themselves just to help kickstart and inspire the fundraiser. It’s also common to recommend the fundraiser make a first donation to their page to show leadership, enhance commitment and not be stuck on $0 any longer.

What if you took this even further. Instead of going to loyal donors for a match (which is a good potential source for a match) what if you asked them to be the “kickstarter” for peer fundraisers. Have them designate some funds that can be dispersed to new fundraisers or, better yet, have them actually make donations themselves to the people and pages. A bit onerous perhaps but if they are wanting to help inspire others in order to raise more funds it might not be a bad idea.

3. Fundraisers with a video raise 2x more than those without

Videos are great at compelling as well as explaining. I think the compelling nature of the video would help for a lot of charity based fundraising where emotion and moving people to action is key whereas the explainer video may be better suited for a new gadget or product.

In either case, videos are easier to spread and keep the message intact and when a strategy relies heavy on social media, like peer fundraising or crowdfunding do, it only enhances the value of videos. Maybe quote this stat to your boss the next time you want to invest in a good, usable video for a fundraising project instead of reusing that footage an intern captured 4 years ago…

Here’s the crowdfunding infographic. Enjoy!