Introducing Crowdfunding For Nonprofits – Donorbox

Donorbox is excited to introduce its new Crowdfunding feature! Donorbox Crowdfunding platform will support nonprofits in their efforts to quickly raise funds, engage donors, and potential donors with their cause and mission. With Crowdfunding, nonprofits will be able to: Raise funds quickly with a powerful, personalized campaign Post campaign updates on your crowdfunding page Send…

Daniel Updated May 16, 2022 4 minutes read

Introducing Crowdfunding For Nonprofits – Donorbox

Donorbox is excited to introduce its new Crowdfunding feature!

Donorbox Crowdfunding platform will support nonprofits in their efforts to quickly raise funds, engage donors, and potential donors with their cause and mission.

With Crowdfunding, nonprofits will be able to:

Raise funds quickly with a powerful, personalized campaign
Post campaign updates on your crowdfunding page
Send email updates to donors and subscribers

Donorbox’s crowdfunding platform is designed to let nonprofits drive strong engagement with their donor base and supporters by including them in their cause. You can get visitors to subscribe to your campaign without donating, so you can engage donors and prospective donors and keep them up-to-date with your campaign.

Your crowdfunding page will allow you to weave a rich tapestry of your organization’s story and mission through these updates by allowing you to add additional formatting and media to your campaign. Nonprofit

In this post, we cover the features that we have included in the first iteration of our Crowdfunding feature.

Please stay tuned as we will continue to listen to you and other organizations’ feedback to shape future features and content.

An Overview of Donorbox Crowdfunding Features

A dedicated crowdfunding page (minisite) for your nonprofit.
Updates: post and manage updates on your crowdfunding page. These updates will be visible to all page visitors.
Email subscriptions for non-donors, with donors, automatically being subscribed after they donate.
Send updates directly through email, either as a batch of multiple updates or a single update
- Customizable email body and subject line before sending the aforementioned updates
Social media links rendered at the bottom of your donation form on your crowdfunding page.
Customizable crowdfunding page so you can add your nonprofit branding- logo, and background image.
Donor wall that automatically populates as your donations pour in, along with the donor messages (if any message is added while donating).

How it works.

Here’s a video on what is crowdfunding and how this feature works on Donorbox – explained with steps!

1. Enabling Crowdfunding

To enable Crowdfunding, simply create a new campaign, and turn on the crowdfunding feature.

Below is a screenshot of the switch that you select.

2. Posting Updates

This feature offers the ability to post updates, allowing organizations to keep their donors and page visitors updated on the status of their campaign.

Here, nonprofits can share content, video, other communications about the progress of their campaign, the cause, or about events associated with their cause.

To post a new update, go to your Campaign’s preview page and select “Manage Updates” located in the pages “Manage Updates” tab on the navigation bar.

Next, fill out the required fields (Title and Description).

Once you have finished, post the update and it will automatically be added to the updates section of your Crowdfunding page.

When you post a new update, it will automatically be placed in the “Unsent to Subscribers” section within “Manage Updates”.

3. Sending Updates to Subscribers

You can either send a single update, select all updates, or select a variable number of updates to your donors.

Upon selecting the updates you want to send, you will be prompted to fill out an email subject line and an optional email text body. You can create a personalized email to send out to your subscribers.

Once an update has been sent to subscribers, it will then be moved to the “Sent to Subscribers” section below. If you decide that you need to edit your update, you will have an option to mark it as unsent which will allow you to resend it to your subscribers.

Some examples of Donorbox crowdfunding campaigns

We are delighted to share some of our early adopters. Check out these crowdfunding campaigns for inspiration!

Few Tips To Create a Successful Crowdfunding Campaign

Engage your audience with a captivating story and visuals. Add your organization’s logo and a visually appealing banner image. Also, you can draw more attention to your campaign by explaining your cause effectively via videos, images, and a description.
Enable social media links to let your donors share your campaign on social channels and increase your reach.
Send an update to your audience to keep them up to date on the status of your crowdfunding campaign. We recommend sending an update once a week to once a month. Make sure to create visually engaging and personal posts.
When should you add an update to your campaign? When you should send the update to your subscribers?
- Add updates to your campaign when you hit a new goal or there’s a new development within your organization. Otherwise, use updates as an opportunity to maintain contact with your donors
- When sending updates, it’s good to be considerate of your subscribers and not send too many email updates. As noted above, we generally suggest sending updates anywhere between once a week to around once a month.

Conclusion

Today, crowdfunding is an established fundraising method for nonprofit organizations. Whether it is for ongoing projects, medical emergencies, wildfires, disaster relief, or hunger relief, crowdfunding is effective for raising funds in a short period of time, as well as for longer nonprofit projects.

Donorbox’s extensive research in building a robust fundraising platform has led us to launch this feature, marking another step to further our support for nonprofits in achieving their missions.

Our crowdfunding platform is specifically designed to create engaging campaigns, so you can explain your cause effectively, and involve your donors and supporters by sharing updates as posts.

However, this is still a work in progress, and we will greatly appreciate your feedback and suggestions. Here is our crowdfunding feedback form. We look forward to hearing from you!