The final installment + Q&A | Diaries of a crowdfunder

For the last six weeks, I have been documenting my journey of crowdfunding for my CIC that I run in Cornwall – 2nd Hand Sundays.

In that time, I have successfully raised £5,165, which was made possible due to Cornwall Council’s extra funding from the Climate and Nature Fund. They gave us £2,500 towards that total target.

I thought to finish the Diaries of a crowdfunder series I would answer some questions that keep coming up.

Q1 : What surprised you the most about crowdfunding?

There were lots of things that did surprise me about crowdfunding as I had no prior experience. One thing that surprised me the most was applying for +Extra funding, but despite my worries, the process was really seamless.

There were guides to help me along the way, and I think there were only about five questions I needed to answer, all of which were straightforward to answer. Cornwall Council were incredibly helpful and it was clear they wanted us to succeed and not fail.

Q2 : What did I enjoy most about Crowdfunding?

I enjoyed talking to the crowd and what I mean by that is, pushing it out on social media, and emails, using updates and seeing the flurry of support come in. We even had a donation from our local MP, and she left a lovely comment of support. Reading all of those comments really gave us an extra push.

Q3 : What is one tip that I will take forward and tell other people about when it comes to crowdfunding?

I have many tips, but I think my one tip is to be consistent with your marketing.
Your project page is super important, so is your video, but once that is done, gaining traction won’t just happen unless you put yourself and or project out there.

So, show up consistently, post daily if you can, make noise and start a conversation with your crowd.

Q4 : Would you crowdfund again?

If I need to, Absolutely! I might be biased, working for Crowdfunder, but before I worked for Crowdfunder, I was aware of a few local projects that had crowdfunded themselves and had great success.

The access Crowdfunder has to +Extra funding makes it unique and certainly allowed us to reach our goal twice as fast and with half the amount of effort. t also what makes them super unique is access to extra funding. So, yeah, I would absolutely crowdfund again. It was fun and I learnt a lot.

Please don’t be put off. There are so many resources on the Crowdfunder website to hold your hand through the process.

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If you’ve missed any of my previous diary entries, find links to everything I’ve covered so far on the Diaries of a crowdfunder page