You may be contemplating on creating a crowdfunding campaign, if so, then you might be choosing the platform to host your crowdfunding campaign. If this is the case, you’ll need to apply to the platform and get approved in order to host your campaign on it. This article will cover the typical process for getting approved and what you can do if you are declined from using a platform.
How to get onto a crowdfunding platform
Each platform will have campaign creation steps that you must follow in order to reach the final stage of review. First, you will need all of your marketing material for the campaign. Then you will need to add it to the campaign as you fill out each step. Next, you will need some form of identification for the platform to verify that you are a real person that can be accountable for the campaign if there is anything that goes wrong. After that, they will review your campaign and approve or disapprove it.
Let’s take a look at some of the information that is asked for when creating a new campaign on some of the most popular crowdfunding platforms.
Here are the 7 steps that Kickstarter makes you fill out when you are creating a new campaign.
First, there’s the Basics step, this includes some of the things you will need to get started such as a title, category, image or video, start/end date, and a few other minor details.
The next step is called Funding. In this step, you are going to be asked for the funding amount that you want to reach, and the currency you want to charge your backers. There’s also a new feature in beta for budgeting your project. The purpose is to help you understand how much it will cost to bring your project to life.
Following the funding step, is the Rewards step. This is where you add any rewards that you want to offer the backers. You can also include add-ons as well which will appear during the checkout.
Next, is the Story step. This is your campaign description. It will include all of the details for your campaign.
There’s a People step after which allows you to add the team members on your project/campaign.
After that, there’s the Payment step. This is to verify and connect your bank account to your campaign. These are the major sections for verification. You will be asked what type of campaign you are going to run, your personal information which gets handled by Stripe and more. If you fail to adequately fill these fields, it is likely that you will be denied to use the platform.
The last step is called Promotions. This is to help you understand how the promotions of your campaign are going. You can also connect to google analytics.
Getting accepted on a platform
As you can see, there are several steps and lots of planning that goes into creating a crowdfunding campaign. The steps for a donations platform like GoFundMe are going to be quite similar.
How do you avoid getting turned down from using a platform like Kickstarter or GoFundMe? First, you need to understand the types of campaigns that are being run on these platforms. It should be quite obvious by the successful campaigns that you see on explore and the front page of the platform. It is recommended to avoid any equity or investment-based solutions as these types of campaigns are not permitted on such platforms and require confirmation from regulatory bodies to ensure that you’re following standard regulations. This article is designed for those that are specifically running rewards/donations-based crowdfunding campaigns. For those that are interested in running equity-based campaigns, it’s best to seek legal advice from a professional and look for platforms that specialize in this kind of paradigm.
There are instances where you can apply to create a campaign on the platform, but you are denied for some vague reason. Although the platform has a right to deny you from using it to raise money, it can be quite frustrating if this happens to you. Once you’ve been denied, it’s hard to be accepted again onto a platform since they have much of your information already. Here’s an example of someone being denied on a crowdfunding platform.
What do you do if you are denied? Well, you have a couple of options. First, is the obvious choice, you can see if there’s another crowdfunding platform that will accept your campaign. Another more powerful solution would be to create your own self-hosted crowdfunding campaign. You can do so using a Thrinacia subscription plan here.
The reason it’s a good solution is that you own the campaign completely. Thrinacia only provides the software, but you are the owner of the campaign, which is why you cannot be banned from using the software. You are completely responsible for following rules and guidelines when it comes to fundraising, but you will not have to abide by another platform’s rules or get approved by a platform in order to start raising funds.
How to create your own self-hosted crowdfunding campaign
If you decide to use Atlas, the white-label crowdfunding platform, you have a couple of different options that you can choose from for your campaign. First, you can use the platform itself as its designed for allowing you to host several crowdfunding campaigns on your own website. It’s usually best if you want to run your own crowdfunding platform. Since you are going to be building your own crowdfunding campaign, rather than a platform, you can use the Sedra widget. It is designed to be used on external websites for hosting a single campaign.
To do this, you will need to be signed up for an Atlas subscription plan. You can try the 14-day free trial if you would like to test it first before purchasing a plan. Once you are ready to move forward, the Micro plan is designed for single campaign usage, so it’s great for those who want to run self hosted campaigns on their own website. Here’s how you can use widget. First, you will need to sign into the platform as a portal admin. You will need to connect your payment gateway either using Stripe or PayPal. You can go to the administrator dashboard, click on portal settings, then click on the website settings. Next you will need to enable the Advanced Crowdfunding Widget toggle. This will turn on the widget so you can use it on a separate website. More information about the entire setup process can be found here.
Once that is turned on, you can simply create your campaign, copy and paste the widget code, then start raising funds. It’s really that simple.
For more information or questions that you may have about the process, you can join Thrinacia’s community chat here.