If you came up with this post, you probably already have a crowdfunding idea, right? Some say that having the idea is easy, the hard thing is to do. But we’re here to show you it’s nothing like that. There are many steps in crowdfunding, but you can navigate them all smoothly without any major worries. This is one of Evoé’s goals . We want you to bring your creations to life and live by doing what you love. It sounds too simple right. But it is, if done with a little haha.
So today we will talk about crowdfunding goal, and most importantly: how to calculate it. Oh, and of course, showing you that calculating your real goal is no seven-headed animal. It can even be quite practical. In just 4 steps we will teach you how. So, come on?
The first thing to do is calculate how much you will need to get your initiative up, without thinking about crowdfunding yet. Raise all possible costs that are part of your idea. Whether it is a plane ticket for the crew to travel, space renovation paints, building material, mastering costs for a song, renting a music studio. Anyway. We gave just a few examples because it varies a lot from project to project. In addition to listing what you’ll need, it’s good to do some research to understand how much each item costs.
At this stage you may think that there may be more than one value to your idea spend. You may be able to run your project for $ 10,000, but if you raise $ 15,000, you can get it done in a more elaborate way. So understand what is the minimum value to put the initiative up and start from there. If your funding campaign is taking off and you reach this amount by the deadline, extend your goal progressively.
But we need to make a very important caveat here: be realistic. If you don’t have a lot of online or offline engagement and are going to start a campaign completely from scratch, really think about how much you can raise. Of course we hope for your success and we know that anything can happen on the Internet – your campaign can even go viral and become a success even before you thought – but don’t put a value that seems unreachable to you. People want to play in a winning team. If they see that the campaign barely has a chance of taking off, they will probably be afraid to make their contribution.
In this second step, we get deeper into a crowdfunding universe. Reward is one of the key elements in distinguishing between an online kitty, for example, and crowdfunding. In kitty, you just ask and offer nothing in return. In funding, you offer the reward as a way of acknowledging your support and creating a supportive user experience. What kind of reward to offer? This varies a lot from project to project, but the cool thing is to think of objects or experiences that have to do with your idea. In this post we present 50 creative reward ideas. Take a read and get inspired. And if you want to dig deeper into your research and understand more about thinking about rewarding crowdfunding, read this article.
Like almost everything in life, the rewards cost money lol. So spending on them needs to get into your cost spreadsheet. Consider how much you will spend to produce each unit, and on average how much will be made. And of course, calculate the shipping as well. You need to average all these values before launching your campaign because these expenses will be in your budget. Remember that you are not financing to pay the rewards, so limit your spending to up to 20% of the total amount you will be asking for in the campaign. We don’t have that value yet, but we’re getting there. For now think what these rewards will be, how many and what the unit price of production and shipping.
Now the time has come to focus on crowdfunding. In addition to these expenses that we have presented before, you can include in your budgets the costs of the campaign specifically. And what are these costs? Well, they are variables from project to project.
Some hire a production company to record and edit the campaign video for example. Even though this is not necessary, it is a practice that can affect the campaign outcome as a good quality video may draw more attention. In addition, you may want to invest in digital marketing by sponsoring posts about your project, then exponentially increasing the spread of your crowdfunding.Another factor that can add costs to your campaign is hiring a professional to do the campaign’s press office, ensuring online and offline media guidelines. You may find it necessary to take professional photos of the entire team, or you would rather invest in a launch event to start the campaign with everything. Or even all of that together. Anyway, the options are many. This goes according to your imagination. The important thing is to find out what actions will be taken, and how much each will cost.
Finally, you must add Evoé’s rate to the values you have added so far (from steps 1, 2, and 3), and only then will you arrive at the final goal value of your project. Evoé retains 12% of the amount raised, – if your project is part of the ‘all or nothing’ modality and has not met the target on time, the platform has nothing of value. This means that we work with a win-win relationship, that is, Evoé’s fee is discounted at the amount each project collects. That way we can create an affordable and democratic crowdfunding platform as you pay nothing to get started, and only get discounted if you get it.
Of this 12%, 4% goes to a partner company that performs financial integration, thus allowing payment by credit cards for example. The remaining 8% is allocated to Evoé’s operating costs, such as platform infrastructure, compensation team, conducting project mentoring, and paying service taxes. That way we can maintain our platform and services to a high quality standard, making everyone – employees, creators and supporters – win.
Did you think it’s too much to do? So we have a surprise: you don’t have to do any account!
That’s right, you can celebrate! We have developed a goal spreadsheet that is also a calculator that assists you in all the steps mentioned. Download your spreadsheet, list all items (and their costs) in each of the 3 steps, and let them do the math for you, including the sum of 12% of the costs. Really good right? And there is more. With this tool you can still calculate how many supporters will need to convert, keeping in mind the average support value per person.
What are you waiting for then? 😉
CLICK HERE AND DOWNLOAD YOUR GOAL WORKSHEET
Crowdfunding this way is much easier, right? haha
That’s it for today. Until the next post and very successful in your campaign!
Do you already know Evoé? Enter here to learn more about crowdfunding.