I'm volunteering for a young EA-aligned nonprofit and trying to put together a crowdfunding campaign. For this campaign, we'd like to pick a platform that's appropriate for a global health charity trying to expand its network and attract donors. Ease of use, high visibility
and matching funds opportunities are also priorities. We hope to reach donors and accept donations from around the world -- especially UK, US and India. There are many fish in this sea, so it's a little hard to narrow our search based on limited information.
Does anyone out there have experience (positive or negative) with a particular platform that you'd care to share? What have your experiences been? Any reasons why you would recommend a certain platform? If anyone has done any kind of studies on any of these platforms, that would also be great to know.
We used kickstarter when we did one. I think we were swayed by the possibility that Kickstarter might recognise how wonderful our project was and we might be selected as one of the projects that people see when they arrive on the main page. If you get this, it's essentially hugely valuable free publicity.
In retrospect, I think this was naive, and probably a mistake. Kickstarter takes (if I remember correctly) 5% of the funds, which is quite a bit.
Hi Sanjay, thanks for sharing your crowdfunding thoughts. I just put my first campaign together for Suvita (all about increasing immunization rates in India). www.gofundme.com/f/suvita. Feel free to share. It was helpful to hear your thoughts and check out your Kickstarter. I appreciate it.
Oh, and SoGive looks like a fantastic project by the way! I'm really interested in spreading a culture of effective giving, which it seems you are too. Let me know if you'd like to discuss some time. Cheers.
Thank you for the info, Sanjay!