# Calling the professional crowdfunders of the future

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/2016/08/26/calling-professional-crowdfunders-future/
- Published: 2016-08-26T15:02:12+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

**This month’s [blog post showcasing successful GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign organisers](https://fundraising.co.uk/2016/08/12/meet-gofundme-campaign-organisers-made-difference/)
highlighted how much can be achieved with a mixture of a truly authentic ask and
a seemingly innate sense of how to inspire, engage and mobilise your online network.**

What’s immediately notable about these campaigns is that they were created by ordinary
people with a passion, rather than “professional fundraisers”. But a few other things
stand out. They all have lived experience of the cause. They all knew how to harness
the power of their own, personal networks to light the touchpaper of their campaign.
And it’s likely that, if you asked the people who gave whether they thought of themselves
as campaigners or donors, they might plump for the former and not the latter. This
raises some important questions for charities about how they deploy a mixture of
digital, campaigning and fundraising skills to mobilise supporters who are motivated
by the high energy and immediacy of a campaign and then keep them engaged, after
they’ve given.

## So is there such a thing as a professional crowdfunder?

Over at The Crowdfunding Academy, we’d say, not yet but soon.

## Advertisement

 [⌊Posthub advert. You create the campaign. We'll handle the postal journey. Get started at post-hub.co.uk.⌉](https://fundraising.co.uk/ads/posthub-20261007-300x250/)

THE key skill for organisational crowdfunders is to enable people to come together
in an authentic, purposeful way. And that goes for collaboration between internal
stakeholders, as well as the external element of the campaign.

The people who have most authentic understanding of need, based on lived experience,
and the most relevant personal networks are usually frontline staff, volunteers,
beneficiaries and supporters who’ve been motivated by a personal connection.

And the people who understand how to organise, mobilise, engage, inspire and steward
the originators and supporters of crowdfunding campaigns are found right across 
an organisation and include campaigners, fundraisers and digital marketers.

So is the need to embrace this cross-fertilisation of ideas and skills holding charities
back from fully exploiting the potential of crowdfunding – to fund novel projects,
reach out to new supporters and build deeper relationships with them for the future?

Our experience tell us it is.

## Late to the party?

It seems a crying shame that a medium so utterly suited for cause related fundraising
is more popular and more used in other sectors. Crowdfunding has challenged the 
traditional VC model to [raise capital for start-ups](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4bf731bc-2e13-11e6-a18d-a96ab29e3c95.html)
from a new breed of tech savvy investors, enabled increasingly mainstream musicians
to [fund their new releases](https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/06/tlc-announces-first-album-in-14-years.html)
through their loyal fan base and allowed businesses to [get new products and services to market](http://www.referralcandy.com/blog/8-ecommerce-businesses-that-achieved-success-through-crowdfunding/)
with funding from early adopters. Donation-based crowdfunding, the main crowdfunding
mechanism used by charities in the UK, grew over 500% in 2015 but the amounts raised
are still relatively small, under £12m in total and makes up less than 0.5% of giving
in the UK, vs 12% of new loans to small businesses and 15% of seed and venture stage
equity investment.

We believe that it’s the skills gap which has made our sector late to the party.
A belief that is evidenced in [Nesta’s Crowdfunding Good Causes report](https://www.fundraising.co.uk/crowdfunding/2016/06/14/charity/),
which also found that training in how to crowdfund would encourage 64% to try it.

## A call to action

[The Crowdfunding Academy](http://thecrowdfundingacademy.org/) has been founded 
to try and meet this challenge and will be drawing on Nesta’s findings about skills
needs to develop its programme of study. In addition to teaching the core skills
around how to run a campaign, we will also be examining how charities can make the
cross organisational case for doing it.

We’re launching on 19th September with a [free Crowdfunding 101 seminar](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crowdfunding-academy-learning-launch-tickets-26942613081)
and what we’d really like to see is a melting pot of fundraisers and campaigners,
frontline staff, volunteers and digital marketers, all thinking together about how
crowdfunding could transform the way that they engage with their networks to win
support for their cause – both for campaigns and for the long term.

So our call to action to fundraisers is to grab a collaborator, come along and use
the opportunity to cook up some fresh ideas about how crowdfunding can transform
the way you fundraise and engage with your networks.

You can [book here](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-crowdfunding-academy-learning-launch-tickets-26942613081).

_**Carol Beaumont** is a Director of The Social Change Agency and a Founder of The
Crowdfunding Academy, a new social venture with an ambitious aim – to to equip the
next generation of mainstream, mass fundraising professionals with the knowledge
and skills to become expert digital fundraising practitioners and leaders._

![Loading](https://fundraising.co.uk/wp-content/plugins/page-views-count/ajax-loader-
2x.gif)