In an earlier post, I talked about how important it is not to sugarcoat your crowdfunding campaign will all sorts of stretch goals and promises that you might fail to deliver. But even if you narrow that list of goals down to a more manageable few, you still need to take extra care on what you are actually presenting to your potential backers. Once you make that pitch, a vast majority of your backers will expect you to deliver if your project is fully funded.
Unfortunately, some creators are using the pitch as an opportunity to attract backers and then execute an entirely different plan. In short, backers won’t be getting what they signed up for and that is something you should avoid whether intentional or unintentional. Bait-and-switch hurts the crowdfunding industry and you can help build people’s confidence on the whole idea of crowdfunding by setting reasonable goals and sticking to them.
It is completely normal to switch gears during the development of a project even if you have things carefully planned out. Even if you raised more funds than you initially asked for, you could experience problems that you have absolutely no control over. A common example is a project that involves a physical product where the creator may hit a snag with the manufacturing process.
Rather than performing a bait-and-switch to deal with the issue (and potentially make it worse), it is better to be honest with your backers and offer them refunds. If you don’t want to head down that route, be firm with your disclaimer and make it clear that the development may change to deal with unexpected issues that may arise. This means that people who back the project will lower their expectations and see the true nature of backing the project which is to support an idea or vision. Treat your backers as if they are part of a community and you never know, they might help you come up with an awesome product that makes everyone happy.