5 tips on how to stand out in crowdfunding world

Guest post by Christopher Wallace
Amsterdam Printing

Let’s go back in time five years to 2007. You’ve got a great idea to build a watch with built-in Bluetooth, allowing you to control and access your phone or tablet from your wrist. Unfortunately, you’re a relatively broke hobby designer working a 9 to 5 technology job.

How do you proceed? Call up your rich uncle and ask him to back you? Go to the bank and apply for a loan?

Five years ago, any method of raising capital for a project would generally require a substantial profit share once the product came to fruition.

That’s no longer the case.

Crowdfunding gains momentum

By now, most people with an Internet connection have at least heard of Kickstarter, the crowd-sourced fundraising site that began in 2008 (and is now joined by a host of other competitor platforms — see some of these Social fundraising tools for nonprofits & causes).

The Kickstarter concept is simple: a budding entrepreneur or artist creates a video explaining their idea for a product or project and posts it to the website (like Dan Cohen did). Nonprofits and causes cannot currently raise funds with Kickstarter though other sites, like Indiegogo and Crowdrise, help fill that void for cause organizations.

Users set a monetary goal they want to reach, with different tiers of donations and corresponding “rewards” to donors. If they reach their goal within the time frame they set, then all of the money goes into the bank account of the creator, minus a 5 percent fee to Kickstarter. In the event that they don’t reach their goal, none of the donors’ credit cards are charged.

Now, until about a year ago, Kickstarter was the domain of garage bands and starving artists. Need $5,000 to get into a recording studio? Make a video and hawk it to the Facebook accounts of all your friends and family.

Then along came the Pebble. With their campaign last spring, the creators of a watch that syncs with smartphones managed to raise over $10 million. When they began the campaign, they set a goal of $100,000.

What does this mean?

Well, if you’re Pebble, it means you’ll be making a lot more watches than you’d initially planned on, and although you’ll be paying Kickstarter a cool $500,000, you won’t ever have to pay off interest to the bank on a $10 million loan.

Revolutionizing the way entrepreneurs raise capital

In a matter of months, Kickstarter has revolutionized the way that entrepreneurs big and small raise capital. There’s no longer any reason to give a financial backer a cut of your profits.

If your idea is good enough, consumers will pay in advance (but you have to give them a deal).

If you’ve got your own idea or are just looking to raise capital for your business, here are the basic ideals of running a Kickstarter campaign to get you started:

Be transparent

1There’s no reason to hide the profits you stand to make. People who believe in your product want you to succeed, but mostly they just want your product at a discount.

Explain in your campaign why you’ve set your goal the figure you choose. What will that money go to? How much does it cost to make this happen?

Be professional

2Nobody is going to believe in your idea if you present it poorly. Whether you’re a comic book artist or a tech geek, it’s crucial that your video and presentation be top notch.

Borrow or hire a professional camera and find someone who knows how to edit video. Draw out a storyline for your video before filming. Show your face in the video. Dress nicely and smile.

Be simple

3Up until the Pebble, one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns to date was the Hidden Radio, an intuitive speaker that wirelessly connects with tablets and phones and pumps out up to 80 decibels of sound, all in the size of a can of soda.

The speaker’s Kickstarter campaign raised $938,000, just shy of $1 million, after setting an initial goal of $125,000. Because the product was attractive and well-explained in simple, layman’s terms, people understood it and immediately wanted it.

In the four-minute videos, the creators explained only what needed to be said, nothing more. People bought it up in droves.

Be generous

4Kickstarter is not a chance to ask for a handout. Just because your project is great, if you’re not a registered nonprofit or social enterprise, think twice before plainly asking for free money.

Think of Kickstarter like a Groupon or daily deal – you’re asking people to pay in advance. Reward them with a significant discount over the price they’d pay if they waited until your product, album, or project is complete.

Be passionate

5Whether you’re a playwright or a video game designer, if you believe in your product, that will show in your campaign. Don’t put up a Kickstarter campaign for anything that you’re not prepared to give 100 percent of your efforts to.

The most successful campaigns turn into full-time jobs for the creators. Best of all, they begin their business without crippling debt.

What ideas do you have that might raise $1 million on Kickstarter?

The post How to raise $1 million on Kickstarter appeared first on Socialbrite.

Best practices to help you leverage the power of the crowd

Guest post by Soha El Borno
Idealware 

Target audience: Nonprofits, cause organizations, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, businesses, general public.

Crowdsourcing can help you harness the crowd to increase awareness, cultivate new volunteers, gather information and even get work done — all for a minimal investment. How can you put it to work for your nonprofit or organization?

Since the earliest days of the Internet, people have used it to solicit and organize groups of people to participate in projects in small ways. Called crowdsourcing, this process can be done in a number of ways and used for a variety of goals.

In an early example of the practice, nonprofits would post questions to a Usenet discussion board to seek answers from the community — for instance, asking how to write a particular policy, or for recommendations about recognizing and rewarding volunteers. That “open call” approach is what distinguishes crowdsourcing from outsourcing, in which you’d send a task to a specific person or organization for help.

Crowdsourcing can be done at an organizational or individual level, and nonprofits have used it for everything from marketing and fundraising to volunteerism and activism. It’s a great way to enlist help from a wider community knowledge base, and to engage people in your work.

In the last few years, the rise of social media and new technologies made it easier to reach and engage a broader audience. But how can your organization harness the power of the crowd to help achieve your mission? We asked nonprofit experts and professionals for crowdsourcing best practices and techniques that have worked for them.

The whys and hows of crowdsourcing 

Nonprofits can use crowdsourcing for a number of purposes, including cultivating new volunteers and donors and spreading the word about your organization’s work to a larger audience.

At its simplest, crowdsourcing is community engagement. Engaging a community — whether it’s your local community, your group of volunteers, donors and clients, or a community of like-minded people who share an interest in your cause — can provide you with ideas, feedback and contributions you might not otherwise get. It can also demonstrate transparency and openness in decision-making. Whoever is in charge of your nonprofit’s Facebook and Twitter activities should keep an eye out for questions to regularly ask followers about activities and events to help keep them engaged.

But there are some cautions to keep in mind, the most important of which is to keep crowdsourcing simple and meaningful. For example, if your organization is drafting a social media policy, your volunteer manager might share a draft with an online community of volunteers and ask for their feedback. If your organization wanted to come up with new plans for an annual fundraising event, your fundraising manager might email all your organization’s supporters to ask for ideas.

We’ve identified five categories of crowdsourcing, and found some real-world examples of nonprofits that have used them successfully.

Pooling collective knowledge

1This category follows the idea that two heads—or more—are better than one. This type of crowdsourcing can be used to share and aggregate information to help solve problems. For example, Ushahidi is an open-source software platform that plots a set of particular incidents, submitted by people via cell phone text messages, onto an online map. Ushahidi, which means “testimony” in Swahili, was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. It has also been used in disaster relief in Pakistan and to map crime incidents in Atlanta.

In an older example, a public radio station in New York City asked listeners to check the price of milk at their neighborhood store and enter it online. Several hundred submissions later, the station had created a detailed map of food prices showing inequities across the city.

Microvolunteering (asking the crowd to help with tiny tasks)

2By breaking large tasks into tiny ones, it’s possible to outsource repetitive jobs to the crowd. For instance, The Seed Company enlisted more than 1,000 residents of a remote village in Asia for help translating the Bible into their native language, with each participant translating a small piece of text. The project was made possible using the crowdsource translation platform Lingotek. Through sites like Sparked  or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, organizations can ask people to perform a small task, such as tagging a picture, finding a phone number or typing a particular piece of text in a specific format. After Hurricane Katrina, for example, thousands of volunteers manually entered 15,200 records to consolidate all the dozens of sources of information about lost or missing people.

Crowd creation

3Tasks of this nature use crowds to help create original works of art. For example, The Royal Opera used Twitter to crowdsource a new “people’s opera” that drew more than 900 contributions, resulting in a 20-minute production in London performed by professional composers. Similarly, the San Francisco Symphony crowdsourced musician auditions for a mash-up performance over YouTube. The end result was a symphony orchestra of more than 90 players representing over 30 countries.

Crowd voting

4Everyone has an opinion, and most people like to express them by voting on or rating something or giving feedback. By tapping into that desire, you can increase awareness for your cause and draw in new audiences for your message. A great example of this is the Brooklyn Community Foundation, which launched a campaign encouraging locals to submit and vote on projects to make the borough a better place. More than 356 projects were nominated, and the number of votes totaled well over 300,000.

Art museums have also used crowdsourcing to let crowds curate and plan exhibitions. A good example is the Brooklyn Museum’s “Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition,” which involved an open call for people to submit photographs. Nearly 3,500 people participated, evaluating more than 350 images and selecting a number for a final exhibition of the photographs in 2008.

Crowd funding

5This category opens the collective pocketbook, encouraging crowds to fund projects that benefit others. Perhaps the most widely known is Kiva, a micro-lending website that uses crowdsourcing for its work. By allowing people to make micro-loans as small as $25 to entrepreneurs in developing countries, the site taps into the generosity of donors to change the lives of thousands in the developing world.

Across the United States, communities are harnessing crowds to provide funds for nonprofits on special “giving days.” In Minnesota, Give to the Max Day raised more than $13.4 million in November 2011, and GiveMN, an affiliated website, raised $46 million since its launch in 2009.

Any of these categories can be used on its own or combined with other approaches to achieve your goals.

Tips for successful crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing and crowd funding projects are within reach of any organization, but there are a few things to keep in mind that will help ensure your success.

• Plan ahead. Start by choosing the right model for your goals. Figure out what you’re trying to achieve and find the best way to do it. Make sure you choose the right crowd, too — setting up a crowdsourcing campaign is the easy part, but getting the word out to the right people is not. Create a fully developed outreach plan, and use a combination of social media and emails to current supporters. These people, in turn, will have access to networks of people with similar interests, and help you pass your project along. If you’re using a crowd-funding site, like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, make sure you choose the one that most closely matches your goal — each has a different approach.
• Keep it simple. Make it very clear what you want the crowd to do, and break down your strategic goals into smaller tasks people can help with. Keep your message as easy as possible to communicate to help it get passed along. In order to help you meet your goal, set reasonable expectations. Crowd-funding is an easy way to ask for donations, but it creates the illusion that hordes of people with large amounts of money are sitting at their computers looking for some place to give it away. Most successful crowd-funding initiatives rely on friends, family and colleagues rather than total strangers. All the same traditional fundraising rules apply: You have to have credibility, you have to have a strong network, you have to have a track record of success, and you have to be transparent on how the money will be used.
• Engage the crowd and reward participation. Approach crowdsourcing as an opportunity to engage a new group of potential supporters. Be as creative as possible in your outreach and plant your campaign in places that you hope will reach new audiences. Think about how to regularly engage with your current supporters and start doing it. Consider giving incentives to reward participation — what do people want in exchange for their help? Try to really understand their motivation. Do they just want to be heard, have fun or learn something new? In this case, a simple acknowledgment might work, but other times, cash incentives might be used.
• Stay positive — both publicly and privately. Throughout the campaign, it’s important to remain personable with the people who might contribute, and a little personal interaction can increase the likelihood of a donation or action. Have faith in the process  and stay focused on your mission — if an activity doesn’t obviously support your mission, forget it.

Crowdsourcing is more than a tactic, it’s a mindset

Crowdsourcing provides many opportunities for nonprofits to tap the power of crowds. If you have a task, question or idea you want to explore, there are many ways to reach and involve people. Always look for opportunities to ask questions or seek feedback from your volunteers, donors, newsletter subscribers, clients, the local community or any community.

Crowdsourcing is a mindset. Want your community to be a part of your decision-making process? Don’t get mired in top-down thinking, and don’t be afraid to take risks or listen to criticism from your constituents or the public. Running a crowdsourcing project is a lot of work. The best approach to accomplishing it is to take your time and just chip away at it. Read through all the necessary steps and complete one task at a time. Unless you are in a rush, there is no rush to complete this. In the end, the tools don’t matter. What’s important is coming up with meaningful ways to engage, learning from other organizations that have successfully used crowdsourcing and have faith in the process.

The post How crowdsourcing can help your nonprofit appeared first on Socialbrite.

Learn about real-world applications — & get a discount

Guest post by Mollie Allick
Director of PR & events, CrowdFlower

On Nov. 1, CrowdFlower will be kicking off the second annual CrowdConf, the world’s largest crowdsourcing conference, at Mission Bay Conference Center in downtown San Francisco. This year’s conference will bring together more than 600 attendees to discuss innovations in crowdsourcing technology and trends taking place in the growing industry.

The main conference will be all day Wednesday, Nov 2. The agenda will focus on practical tips and tools for understanding crowdsourcing through a range of lenses including investing, philanthropy, community building, and creativity. The day includes keynotes, debates, and interactive breakout sessions, and will conclude with a networking poster reception.

Speakers include: Jeff Howe, author who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Philip Rosedale, Founder of Second Life; Mark Gerson, Chairman of Gerson Lehrman Group; Charlie Cheever, Founder of Quora, Sharon Chiarella, vice president of Amazon Mechanical Turk; and more than 50 other incredible speakers representing the most influential and fastest-growing crowdsourcing companies. Check out the full list of speakers.

Additional learning opportunities

For those looking to learn more, be sure to join us one day prior to the main event on Nov. 1 for two great workshops that will focus more on research and industry-specific tutorials. Workshops offer conference attendees a head start as they engage in a more intimate exchange with other thought leaders and crowdsourcing experts. Workshops will be taught by: Omar Alonso, Technical lead on the Bing team at Microsoft; Matt Lease, assistant professor at the University of Texas; and David Alan Grier, columnist at IEEE Computer. Space is limited, so register now.

Discount for Socialbrite readers

Socialbrite readers can get a $75 discount by entering the code SCLBRTORG when registering.
Register at Eventbrite.

Event details:
What: CrowdConf 2011 – www.crowdconf.com
When: Workshops: Tuesday, Nov. 1 (10am-3pm); Conference: Wednesday, Nov. 2 (8:30am-6:30pm)
Where: Mission Bay Conference Center, 1675 Owens St., San Francisco
Cost: $75 for workshops, $450 for conference
Register: http://crowdconf2011.eventbrite.com/

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Platform sources online volunteers to help nonprofits get the most out of the social Web

Target audience: Nonprofits, NGOs, cause organizations, social enterprises, online media professionals, social media managers, marketing professionals, individuals.

Guest post by Jennifer Helfrich
Communications Manager, Media Cause

Having a social media strategy is an essential component for effective nonprofits and the causes they represent. However, creating a strong Web presence requires funding, technical skill and time – three things many nonprofits never have enough of. Case in point: James Schaffer, executive director of the Tiba Foundation, says finding time for the social Web is a frequent challenge. “Most of our time and effort goes to our actual project work, so when it comes to Web outreach, it can be a little overwhelming trying to gain a foothold out there.”

Enter Media Cause. Eric Facas founded the nonprofit Media Cause in April to connect admirable organizations like the Tiba Foundation with Internet outreach professionals interested in volunteering. Facas found that social media experts capable of giving advice want to support good causes, but many don’t have the time to take on a pro bono client. For a flexible and relatively small time commitment, Media Cause allows volunteers from around the world to connect with nonprofits and offer their expertise on focused project needs. Most projects posted on Media Cause are hourlong commitments, can be sorted by cause and can be completed entirely online. Volunteers can offer expertise in three areas: search engine optimization, social media marketing and Google Grants support.

Proven track record of helping nonprofits

Hundreds of successful match-ups between nonprofits and volunteers have been made since Media Cause’s launch in April. Here are some examples of recent projects nonprofits have posted and the expert advice they have received:

• Children Across America posted a Media Cause challenge asking for help with the organization’s Twitter account. Lianne Murphy of the United Kingdom volunteered her expertise and responded with a bullet-point list of valuable advice — for instance, the proper use of hashtags. Executive director Raymond Fellows says he feels indebted to Murphy for her advice. “We had basically written Twitter off as ineffective but she showed us the difference between ‘using Twitter’ and ‘effectively using Twitter.’”

• The Tiba Foundation has posted a series of challenges through Media Cause asking for volunteers for a variety of social media advice. One such project was titled, “Help Tiba understand the power of social commenting and engagement!” and received a flood of responses. Joselyn Bickford submitted tips for creating a more personable Facebook page, Nicola Parry sent along a helpful blog post on the topic, and Varangi Vora commented with general thoughts on tactics for improving online presence. Executive director Schaffer says Media Cause has sharpened the Tiba Foundation’s social media edge. “The advice from Media Cause volunteers has been great,” says Schaffer. “The Media Cause Web platform has been easy to use, and we’re starting to see the results in terms of traffic and engagement on our Web properties.”

Will you volunteer to amplify the voice of a nonprofit?

Nonprofits consistently struggle to reach and engage their supporters. Those with the media know-how and technical savvy who could truly help these nonprofits have busy schedules that make volunteering difficult. Even given the time, nonprofits and potential volunteers might never find each other. Media Cause provides the space for these two communities to connect, and a simple, constructive method for skilled professionals to give back. A portion of your spare time could amplify the voice of a nonprofit. Work your media magic for a cause: Sign up as a Media Cause volunteer today.

The post Media Cause: Crowdsourced online marketing for nonprofits appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, NGOs, foundations, businesses, educators. This is part two of a two-part series on crowdsourcing. Also see:

• How nonprofits can use crowdsourcing to work smarter and save money

One of the most fascinating phenomena in the Web 2.0 world the past couple of years has been the rise of crowdsourcing.

Crowdsourcing comes in a few different flavors (which part 1 covered yesterday). For nonprofits, social enterprises and businesses, the real potential for disruption comes when a global labor force applies itself to a crowdsourced project.

That’s where CrowdFlower comes in. Since my interview with founder-CEO Lukas Biewald at SXSW 15 months ago, the start-up has grown from 15 to 60 employees and is now headquartered in a spiffy second-floor space in San Francisco’s Mission District.

Mollie Allick, director of PR and events for CrowdFlower, talks about what crowdsourcing is and how nonprofits and other organizations can use the power of the crowd to advance their mission in this 4 1/2-minute interview at their offices. “We take large datasets and break them down into small tasks and distribute them to a labor force across the Internet,” she says.

Watch, embed or download the video on Vimeo

It’s not just about reducing costs. CrowdFlower was one of the partners in the collaborative mobile relief effort Mission 4636, which we wrote about following the Haiti earthquake last year. The short code emergency response communication system enabled earthquake victims in Haiti to get life-saving aid by sending a free mobile text message, which local volunteers translated as needed.

One important thing CrowdFlower brings to the party today is that they’re the organizers behind the biggest crowdsourcing gathering around: CrowdConf, to be held Nov. 1-2 at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, geared to both industry and the academic sector. Last year’s event drew almost 500 people.

Crowdflower is also organizing smaller events in Washington, DC, New York, Boston and Austin, Texas. Other crowdsourcing events include ClickWorker, held June 15 in Berlin, and the Crowdsortium Symposium, held in May at Google.

Some of CrowdFlower’s nonprofit customers include the University of Southern California, the environmental media organization Dialogue Earth, Caring.com, a portal for aging parents, spouses and loved ones, Doximity, a mobile collaboration network for physicians, and the social good organization GVF, whose team has spent the last 10+ years developing a global system to prevent pandemics.

Keep your eye on crowdsourcing and see whether you might find a use for it in the months or years to come.

Related

• Helping Haitians via mobile, crowdsourcing & social media (Socialbrite)

• CrowdFlower: Toward a world of crowdsourced labor (Socialbrite, 2010)

• The Extraordinaries: Building the ‘micro-volunteering’ movement (Socialbrite)

• Harnessing the crowd for social good (Socialbrite)

• Is Crowdsourcing Really the Industry’s Dark Side? (Waxing Unlyrical)

The post How CrowdFlower powers crowdsourced labor appeared first on Socialbrite.

Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, NGOs, foundations, businesses, educators. This is part one of a two-part series on crowdsourcing.

By Lindsay Oberst
Socialbrite staff

High-quality work at a low cost. That’s what crowdsourcing can achieve for nonprofts that wish to save money while pursuing their mission.

Crowdsourcing refers to harnessing the skills and enthusiasm of those outside an organization who are prepared to volunteer their time contributing content or skills and solving problems, sometimes for free, sometimes for a fee. An offshoot, crowd funding, describes the collective efforts to pool their money together on behalf of a cause, project or business. Kiva (loans to entrepreneurs), Crowdrise and Kickstarter (raise funds for creative projects) and Greenfunder, which launched in May as a site to raise funds for socially responsible projects and businesses, are among the burgeoning number of crowd funding sites. (See a few others in our roundup of 24 tools for fundraising with social media.)

Crowdsourcing, a bit of a catch-all term, can be used to gather information, solicit advice, save money or get stuff done. It can also help to inform decisions, demonstrate inclusiveness and bring a whole new meaning to collaboration.

We’ve seen the rise of community crowdsourcing with the advent of social media, but it’s always been part of the way society works. And nonprofits have always been at the forefront of crowdsourcing long before the term was coined in 2006. The idea simply fits in with the way small organizations work.

Here are a few quick, low-key ways crowdsourcing works

Say you’re a nonprofit looking to improve your services. You ask your Facebook fans and Twitter followers — people who have chosen to connect with you — how they think you can become better. They feel included in the process and want to answer, and then your organization has a solution to its problem. That’s what crowdsourcing can do — it can get a job done.

Or take blog posts. Studies show that people respond better to posts with images, so your organization seeks to include a photo along with the information you provide on your website. Where can you find images? Two good starts are Socialbrite’s Free Photos Directory and Flickr’s directory of Creative Commons photos, with 160 million photos available under various licenses. Both can be used to find free photos that you can use for your website, blog posts, reports, presentations and more — just give the photographers proper attribution.

Or maybe you’re wondering if your idea has been tried before — say, if someone has already learned lessons from running a fundraising campaign using Twitter? (Yes.)

Organizations are already using crowdfunding, crowd voting and crowdsourcing to gather information and improve the way they work. You’ll find that there are a handful of companies and services that offer crowdsourcing as their core business, such as CrowdFlower and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, while other companies use crowdsourcing to deliver other services, such as Elance (a marketplace for freelance services), All Our Ideas (a platform for crowdsourced suggestions) and GeniusRocket (a logo and Web design service).

3 examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing

Samasource

A number of nonprofits have taken the plunge and begun taking advantage of the new landscape. One of our favorites is Samasource, a nonprofit whose entire model is based on crowdsourcing dignified work to a workforce based in developing nations. Here are three other examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing.

1All Our Ideas (“a suggestion box for the digital age”). This open source software is free to use and allows viewers to vote on ideas and add their own. Matthew Salganik, who created the project and works in the department of sociology at Princeton University, says it “allows the best ideas to bubble to the top.”

Catholic Relief Services, a nonprofit, is the official international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States. They wanted to evaluate all the workers in each of their offices around the world. All Our Ideas gave them an internal platform to source ideas from their workers, the people who know best about how everything works.

This idea platform is not limited to nonprofits or work evaluation. Others using it include the New York City Mayor’s Office and The Washington Post, which used it to increase reader participation.

2GeniusRocket (“the first curated crowdsourcing company”). According to GeniusRocket president Peter LaMotte, two forms of popular creative crowdsourcing exist. The first is what 99Designs offers. They outsource logo and Web design services to the public.

The second is what he calls “curated crowdsourcing.” His company creates solutions using vetted professionals and everything is kept private. They began using the first method and then realized some nonprofits didn’t want their messages blasted across the Internet, nor did they want to sort through hundreds of submissions.

“We make it a lot more affordable for nonprofits to source creative marketing content, yet we have a professional community,” LaMotte said.

Nonprofits use GeniusRocket primarily for the creation of videos and customizable content.

3Spot.us. “Community-funded reporting” is the tagline of this crowdsourcing service. United Roots, an Oakland-based nonprofit that uses music to help kids heal and learn entrepreneurial skills, is one example of how crowdsourced reporting can be used to create community-based coverage. Five of their stories were funded through Stories for Good and Spot.us.

For other similar services, see this answer on Quora. The Techsoup.org blog also has some good examples of nonprofits using crowdsourcing services.

As you can see, the possibilities of crowdsourcing are extensive. It still has limits, and it may not be the best solution for every nonprofit or organization, but it’s worth considering in the right circumstances.

Want more crowdsourcing?

• We recently showed our readers on way to crowdsource web design on the cheap.
• Our earlier article about 15 ways to crowdfund a project.

Coming Thursday: Look for our interview with Mollie Allick of CrowdFlower.

Related

• Samasource enables socially responsible outsourcing (Socialbrite)

• Tap into the collective power of your community (Socialbrite)

• Crowdsourcing a presentation at SXSW (Wiser Earth Blog)

• Social good crowdsourcing (Mashable)

• An app to support refugees working in Africa (Socialbrite)

• 10 kickass crowdsourcing sites for your business (Econsultancy)

• 6 Great Crowdsourcing Sites For Freelancers (Sitepoint)

• Crowdfunding: Investment for Good (Care2)

The post How nonprofits can use crowdsourcing to work smarter and save money appeared first on Socialbrite.

MycroBurst offers readers special discount to try out service

Target audience: Nonprofits, social enterprises, foundations, NGOs, cause organizations, startups.

When I was at BlogWorld Expo in New York earlier this month, I spent quite a bit of time walking around the exhibit hall.

One of the companies I came across was MycroBurst, a marketplace that helps you crowdsource any kind of design – website, logo, stationery, T-shirt, you name it, there’s a community of designers signed up there to vie for the honor of creating your project. Similar crowdsourcing communities include crowdSPRING and 99designs (website and logo designs), uTest(software testing) and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (data entry and verification).

Special offer for Socialbrite readers

The MycroBurst team gave me a discount code to give out as a special offer, which waives the standard $19 set-up fee for anyone who uses it. So, in essence, you can post a free project (you’ll still have to decide on the amount of your prize money, etc.) and probably get some great designs to help you along. If you’d like to take advantage this special offer, just plunk in the code B222 when you post your project.

if you have any trouble, please let me know. The code is valid through July 17, which gives you a few weeks to get a new project going.

How MycroBurst works

First, you select what kind of project you want crowdsourced and post the details along with how much of a “prize” you’re offering. MycroBurst suggests $149 as a good starting point, but if you offer a higher prize, you’re likely to get more entries. Once you’ve posted your project, a contest starts among the designers on the site to present their best idea (see examples in the main image above).

Throughout the project, you can review the entries, give feedback and then at the end of the contest select your favorite as the winner. Give the designer his or her prize money, and you’re done – probably for far less than you’d pay otherwise.

There is typically a $19 set-up fee for MycroBurst to run your contest, along with a 7.5% credit card processing fee and various options for you to select from in terms of promoting it. You can head over to the MycroBurst site to learn more about the details. I’ve seen other crowdsourcing design sites, and I really like the way this one works. No doubt the fact that Joe Witte, one of the people behind MycroBurst, took some time to talk to me and give me a demo made a difference.

Here is some other information about the site that may be helpful:

• There are currently an average of 104 concepts per project posted. A project typically lasts 7 days, unless for some reason you need to extend it.
• MycroBurst is so confident in its model that they offer money back guarantees if a logo project doesn’t get at least 30 concepts. Think about that – 30 concepts in one week – that’s  a pretty promising outcome.
• 80% of MycroBurst clients gave them a “9” or a “10” when asked if they would refer the firm to a friend or colleague (metric based on the “Ultimate Question” book by Fred Reichheld, and his “Net Promoter” question).

How to make your MycroBurst project successful

• Give good feedback to the community during the project, and give star ratings.
• Invite designers (not just the top designers, they get tons of invitations) to participate in your projects.
• Make your project guaranteed — that means someone will definitely win the prize — since it will result in 70% more concepts.

I’ve been thinking about doing not only a blog redesign but also a website redesign and MycroBurst might be just the thing for me. I don’t have a huge budget, and I’m smart enough to know that I shouldn’t try to design something myself. I’m great with concept, but the technical execution not so much.

Happy MycroBursting!

Tell us: Have you used a crowdsourcing service? Did it work for you?

The post Expert Web design on the cheap appeared first on Socialbrite.

Have you considered asking the community to support your new enterprise?

Target audience: Social enterprises, nonprofits, volunteer groups, sustainable businesses, community organizations.

Guest post by Kerry Given
Green Marketing TV

Finding funding can be one of the biggest challenges for social entrepreneurs. Fortunately, there is a growing number of options for social entrepreneurs and founders looking for capital to start or expand their social enterprise, startup or nonprofit organization and do more good in the world.

One non-traditional funding opportunity that has seen exponential growth in recent years is the phenomenon of “crowdfunding.” Family and friends have been one of the most common sources of venture funding capital for centuries. Crowdfunding takes this age-old source of venture funding and brings it into the digital age.

Thanks to social media and other forms of modern technology, entrepreneurs are able to build networks of friends, colleagues and like-minded individuals more easily and effectively than ever before. Crowdfunding websites allow entrepreneurs or project leaders to leverage these networks to gain funding.

Typically, entrepreneurs post a request for funding on a crowdfunding site with a detailed project description. Depending on the site, funding may be provided as a loan or a donation. Once the funding request is posted, the entrepreneurs use their networks to spread the word about their project to potential donors through word of mouth, email, Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms.

Crowdfunding is not for everyone. The majority of crowdfunding sites fund entrepreneurs on an all-or-nothing basis. If the project is fully funded when the deadline arrives, the money is given to the entrepreneur. If it is not fully funded, it is returned to the donors to keep or donate to another project. So it’s important to have a compelling project or story and to be a skillful marketer and networker to ensure that word about your project reaches enough potential donors to fully fund the project before the deadline. If you’re confident that your social enterprise has what it takes to become a crowdfunding success story, you may find crowdfunding to be the perfect option for your fundraising efforts.

The following is a list of crowdfunding websites that can help your social enterprise, sustainable business or nonprofit organization get off the ground:

33 Needs: Connecting microinvestors & social enterpreneurs

133needs is a recent crowdfunding startup that connects microinvestors with social entrepreneurs who have big ideas in categories such as sustainable food, health, education and the environment. Investors can earn a percentage of revenue in exchange for their support.

AppBackr: Offset app development costs

2A specialty crowdfunding site that may be useful to some social enterprises, AppBackr allows Apple developers to get funding upfront for iPhone, iPod and iPad apps in the concept stage by selling the app wholesale to backers, who receive a percentage of the profits for the apps they have purchased. Many app buyers also assist developers with marketing and promoting their apps to ensure that their investment is fully recouped. With a growing number of social enterprises tapping into the explosive apps market to raise awareness and sell products or services, AppBackr may be a useful tool to help offset app development costs, and even gain some extra promotional help.

Buzzbnk: Supporting a wide range of fields

3Buzzbnk is a crowdfunding platform especially for social enterprises that allow funders to donate either money or time to support social enterprises working in a wide variety of fields. Though based in the UK, it is open to social ventures operating anywhere in the world. Social enterprises must submit their project proposal to Buzzbnk and the Buzzbnk team will work with the social enterprise to help develop appropriate fundraising targets and benefits or rewards to offer funders.

CauseVox: Fundraising pages for nonprofits

4CauseVox offers nonprofit organizations a fully customizable fundraising page that makes collecting money from supporters easy. Supporters can also create their own personalized fundraising pages. Social media integration makes it easy to embed YouTube videos, Flickr slideshows and more.

ProFounder: Investors share in the profits

5ProFounder caters to entrepreneurs – social or otherwise – who are looking for alternative sources of venture capital. ProFounder provides a secure platform where entrepreneurs can raise money from family members, friends and other connections, who then receive a share of the profits when the business they have invested in succeeds. This revenue sharing system is good for investors and good for entrepreneurs, because it doesn’t commit entrepreneurs to making debt payments (potentially with high interest rates) during periods of bad business, only when the business is successful and profitable.

Kickstarter: Supporting a wealth of creative projects

6One of the best-known crowdfunding websites is Kickstarter, which rose to fame after the open source Facebook alternative Diaspora raised more than $200,000 on the site. Kickstarter funds creative projects such as independent films and music albums, books, software, citizen journalism, theatrical productions and more. Project creators are required to offer rewards to donors, such as bonus musical tracks, autographed books, signed prints, free performance tickets or something similar. Although Kickstarter cannot be used to fund social enterprise start-ups, it can be a great source of funding for social enterprises and nonprofits hoping to use creative projects to raise awareness of their cause, as well as for social-minded creative enterprises such as nonprofit theater companies and independent music producers. Other great crowdfunding sites focusing on creative projects include IndieGoGo, RocketHub, UK-based Crowdfunder and Australian-based Pozible.

ChipIn: Embed a widget, raise $

7ChipIn is a simple widget that can be posted on blogs, websites and many social media profiles. It allows individuals, private groups, non-profits and others to raise money easily online.

Crowdcube: Equity-based investment community

8UK-based Crowdcube bills itself as “the world’s first equity-based crowdfunding community dedicated to business investment.” In exchange for microinvestments of as little as £10, investors can fund worthy enterprises and in exchange gain a share of direct equity in the business. Crowdcube is currently available only to UK-based investors and entrepreneurs who have or can start a UK Limited Company, but hopes to expand to other regions in the future.

Give.fm: Create your own campaign

9Give.fm allows nonprofits and individuals to set up a campaign to raise money for causes ranging from local soccer teams to international efforts to fight poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and more. The site works by allowing donors to set up recurring microdonations of as little as 10 cents per day.

Peerbackers: Raise funds from your peers

10Peerbackers offers entrepreneurs and nonprofits of all types the opportunity to raise funding for their idea from their friends, family and peers. Rather than receive financial returns or equity, backers receive rewards such as free or discounted versions of the products or services offered by the company.

FirstGiving: Raise funds for your favorite cause

11FirstGiving has helped more than 8,000 nonprofit organizations connect with more than 13 million donors and raise more than $1 billion to date, it reports. The site allows nonprofit supporters to create their own fundraising page to raise money for the cause of their choice.

Razoo: Simple, secure tools to raise funds

12Razoo is a crowdfunding platform for nonprofits and charities that allows individuals, organizations, corporations and foundations to set up a fundraising page to raise money for their own cause or their other cause of choice. Razoo also allows team campaigns.

Sponsume: Free fundraising platform

13Sponsume is a crowdfunding startup, launched in 2010, that allows both creative projects and social enterprises to raise funding on the site. Sponsume is currently free to use, but does plan to start charging fees in the future.

Spot.us: Funding citizen journalism

14Spot.us is a one-of-a-kind crowdfunding platform that supports citizen journalists by funding their investigations of specific topics. Spot.us can be a very useful tool for organizations seeking to raise awareness through hard-hitting investigative journalism, community reporting or similar means.

Start Some Good: New kid on the block

15Start Some Good is a new crowdfunding startup that launched in February with the goal of connecting social entrepreneurs with crowdfunded venture capital. Start Some Good allows both for-profit and nonprofit social enterprises to post fundraising campaigns to the site. Team members will help review the campaign’s goals and rewards to ensure they’re a good match for Start Some Good’s philosophy.

Have we left any crowdfunding websites off this list? Please leave a comment below!

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)

• 9 Web platforms to help you change the world (Socialbrite)

• 12 awesome platforms for social good (Socialbrite)

• Ideavibes: A new way to do crowdsourcing & crowdfunding campaigns (Socialbrite)

The post 15 ways to crowdfund your startup or project appeared first on Socialbrite.

Engage4change contest asks SF residents for ideas to improve housing & transportation

Editor’s note: A start-up called Ideavibes has created a crowd-engagement platform that can be purchased by nonprofits, government agencies or businesses to do their own crowd engagement or crowd funding. It’s one of the more interesting companies we spotted at Web 2.0 Expo this week.

Guest post by Paul Dombowsky
Founder & CEO, Ideavibes

As every nonprofit, business or government knows, the more engaged your constituents, the more likely they are to give or participate. What’s the best way to engage, then? A new technology, fresh on the market, promises to make it easier for people to participate and have their voices heard.

Ideavibes, a start-up based in Ottawa, Ontario and displaying at San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Expo (ending today), has developed a Crowd Engagement Platform that enables organizations to create crowdsourcing and crowdfunding campaigns. Nonprofits, municipalities and businesses can use the platform to engage a wide swath of constituents by seeking input or project funding in a highly visible and transparent interaction.

What we’re seeing is this: Participants feel involved, visible and acknowledged with the platform. When individuals can see their input or dollars recognized and valued, they are more likely to participate, and more likely to encourage others to follow suit.

The Ideavibes platform can be easily deployed on a current or a newly developed website built with the organization’s branding. The platform includes everything needed to run a crowdsourcing or crowdfunding campaign: Submit an idea, fund a project or make a donation and have the opportunity to comment and vote on the submissions of others. The immediate feedback of viewing their submissions provides participants an immediate public acknowledgement. They are further compelled to invite friends and family to support their idea or donation, to raise its visibility.

Engage4change, a crowdsourcing contest, kicks off

To demonstrate its crowd engagement platform, we’ve just launched Engage4change, a 14-day crowdsourcing contest focused on culling innovative ideas for improving housing and transportation in the city of San Francisco. It ends April 10. The idea that receives the most votes will be presented to San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee on April 12, and the person who submitted it will be awarded $250.

The Ideavibes platform has already been used in crowdsourcing campaigns for the Pathways2Sustainability conference, the University of Toronto and TELUS. The platform is also the backbone for the recently launched Fundchange crowdfunding initiative with TELUS in Canada.

For more info, visit:
• Engage4change.com
• ideavibes.com

Related

• 24 tools for fundraising with social media (Socialbrite)
• Behind the success of 10 top Causes (Socialbrite)
• 10 mobile apps for social good (Socialbrite)
• A directory of top cause organizations (Socialbrite)

The post Ideavibes: A new way to do crowdsourcing & crowdfunding campaigns appeared first on Socialbrite.

The Extraordinaries lets your organization create a crowdsourced ‘mission’

By Kim Bale
Socialbrite staff

Recruiting friends and supporters to get real work done virtually on behalf of social-good projects is easy and fun with the help of The Extraordinaries. Based in San Francisco, the company has created a platform allowing anyone to create a micro-task and blast it to their community of friends and supporters to generate real, usable output when they spend a few minutes of their spare time on an iPhone or computer.

You can download the iPhone app at BeExtra.org and check out a wide array of simple tasks you can help with. Missions featured today on the Beextra home page include:

• Build a collection of cute dog photos for GoodDogz.org.
• Help build a searchable photo archive for the Smithsonian Institution (yes, that Smithsonian).
• Create a list of job resources for youths on behalf of Goodwill.
• Rate tweets from the SXSW conference.

The tools The Extraordinaries have created are available to nonprofits, for-profits, politicos, evangelists and passionate people alike. For example, Citizens Market, a company tracking corporate behavior, is using The Extraordinaries to research and rate company behavior. To map children’s recreational spaces, KaBOOM! is asking people to mark the GPS location of a playground, rate it up or down and snap a photo, such as the one at top.

Anyone can create a mission and harness the power of the crowd to achieve results while engaging and interacting with the broader community — the Extraordinaries has 29,000 registered users, more than 250 missions and 240,000 micro-tasks completed. The team vetts all apps submitted to the site.

Ways for nonprofits to use The Extraordinaries

How can you use The Extraordinaries?

1. Identify your needs. Many tasks, particularly administrative duties, are ripe for crowdsourcing. The Extraordinaries breaks these tasks into small bits of work with the potential for a big impact. Where could you use a few hundred extra hands? First identify your needs, then see how The Extraordinaries community can help meet them.

2. Create a mission. The Extraordinaries has created a few standard templates, making it easy to create a micro-task, or “mission,” and the list continues to grow.

• Build a map. Whether your organization is creating a map of playgrounds across the country or you just want to locate community gardens, this mission will allow your friends and supporters to help you build the map.

• Collect photos. Let the general population help you build a photo library with this mission. Users take and upload photos, which can then be rated, creating a ranked stock library for you to use.

• Tag and catalog photos. Organize your photo archive with the help of The Extraordinaries. Friends and supporters can add descriptive tags to your digital library, making it searchable and easy to navigate.

• Research a topic or issue. Need research on grants available to your organization, or information on businesses not engaging in sustainable practices? Let your community help do the research and generate usable data.

3. Complete your profile. Just like any social site, The Extraordinaries asks that you complete a profile for your organization. Upload a logo that is simple and recognizable, along with a brief description of who you are, what you do and why you’re asking for help. These are largely read on mobile phones, so brevity is key.

4. Engage your community. Let your friends and supporters know they can do real work for you via their iPhone or computer. Encourage them to download the iPhone app or complete your mission via the Web. The Extraordinaries can provide you with direct links to your mission page and embeddable tools for your website. When people complete your mission, they’ll have the opportunity to tweet about it and share it via Facebook or email, increasing your exposure and missions completed.

At South by Southwest Interactive on Friday, a TechSoup representative cited the Extraordinaries’ efforts to bring a new dimension to relief efforts after the earthquake in Haiti. The site collected 8,137 news photos and volunteers submitted 76,584 image tags, resulting in 746 possible matches and 24 matches good enough to contact family members.

Clearly, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the service’s possible uses in the years ahead.

The app is not yet available on other platforms.

How would you use The Extraordinaries? Share your ideas in the comments below.

Related

• The Extraordinaries: Building the ‘micro-volunteering’ movement (Socialbrite)

• New ways to take social actions (Socialbrite)

• Harnessing the crowd for social good (Socialbrite)

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