Budget and Timeline Essential for Crowdfunding

When you’re setting your budget and timeline , it’s easy to fall into some traps. It needs to walk that line between being achievable, while still being able to complete your purpose.

If you ask for too much, you risk falling short and not being able to achieve your goals. If you don’t ask for enough, you may fail to achieve your goals and end up not being able to pay for reason why you needed the funds in the first place which may upset some of your backers.

So let’s look at a few tips for setting a budget that will achieve your goals, without making things harder.

Set the right project Costs

Write down all the things you need to do in a list. Then put a price on each of those things. This is your project budget cost – the amount you need to achieve what you want to do, before fees and rewards costs.

Back to our case study Jane :

Jane has done a lot of research on her Campaign and knows in order to go she will need to cover…

$2,000 – Flights, train tickets, and car rental

$500 – Local accommodation and food

That’s a total of $2500 before rewards costs and Fundmysugarbaby fees.

Cost of your rewards

Now work out how much each reward is going to cost you to create;

This should be above and beyond anything that is already covered in your base budget.

Jane works out that her $5, $10, $50, $500 and $1000 levels will essentially cost her nothing but a little time to provide, once she’s got the main costs covered.

The $100 reward will cost her money in the future, but she’s happy to pay this out of her ongoing earnings once she enters the workforce in the next few years, as opposed to out of her project costs.

Remember the fees

Campaigns are charged a 8% fee. plus 2.9 % credit card fees so a total of 10.9 % for each campaign

After calculating her project, Jane has made a quick change to the rewards structure, and has a new total to ask for. The funding goal Jane will try to raise is $2,800.

The extra $300 above her project cost will cover the costs of making and sending the cookies, as well as her FundmySugarbaby and credit card fees.

Recap: Pulling it all together

There’s an art to setting the right budget and timeline for your funding goal. The trick is to create crowdfunding rewards that cost little or nothing to offer to Backers. There is real value in digital rewards for this reason. The best reward will cost absolutely nothing beyond your base cost and time to create and fulfill.

Remember that you are making a promise to your Backers that you can do the thing for this amount of money. Also remember that the less you ask for, the more likely you are to get it.

CAMPAIGN LENGTH AND TIMING

A crowdfunding campaign involves a lot of effort. Choosing the correct launch date is crucial. You don’t want that going on when you’re just about to face 2 weeks of solid deadlines or exams at school.

It pays to put some thought into WHEN you are going to run your campaign.

45 Days

45 days is the ideal crowdfunding campaign length for a Fixed goal Campaign. It’s enough time for getting the word out as far as possible, without losing momentum. Momentum is really important because you’ll get the largest number of donations in the first AND last week of your project.

The choice of the launch date deserves all your attention and brainpower. Studies have shown that the FIRST 3 DAYS f a campaign are decisive for its subsequent success or failure.

Campaigns can range from 30 days to 60 days plus, a Fundmysugarbaby, campaign can also be a fixed time period or as a monthly recurring campaign so all you have to do is set the start date!

By choosing a date to start and end carefully you can maximize your time and give the most attention to your campaign to ensure you will have a greater success.