Crowdfund Newbie
Tina and the Wildcats
By Ambrose Moses, III
By day Tina runs a small coffee shop and takes care of her family. Then, one night per week and on Saturday morning, she gets together with the ferocious, non-all-star, barely-hitting, slow-motion running, fun-loving Westside Wildcats.
The Westside Wildcats is an adult co-ed softball team with 15 team members. They win some. They lose some. But they always have fun. Tina plays third base.
The team learned that Tina needed to raise $2,500 to add a line of iced mocha, fruit juice, and smoothies to her coffee shop’s menu. This would add additional revenue for the shop by offering customers something other than hot coffee to go with their donuts and muffins.
Larry suggested that the team do a crowdfund campaign to help Tina’s business. Larry explained that crowdfunding is a way for the team to raise money to help Tina’s business by asking each team member and each team member’s network to contribute money to support the team’s goal of $2,500. In exchange for their contributions, the contributors would receive perks or rewards. The team agreed to do it.
As a perk, Tina agreed to give a buy-one-get-one-free coupon for each contribution of $10 and a travel mug for each contribution of $25 or more. With that information, Larry set up the crowdfund campaign on a crowdfunding website. Larry provided each Wildcat with a link to the crowdfunding campaign and asked them to send it out to their network of family, friends, and contacts.
Larry and Tina posted campaign updates every couple of days. After four weeks, they had raised $2,250 from their networks.
Each team member had also contributed $25 via the crowdfund campaign. The total raised was $2,625. After deducting crowdfund website expenses of $125, there was a net of $2,500 for Tina’s coffee shop menu expansion plans.
Crowdfunding provides “the crowd” (i.e. groups, teams, families, communities, schools, friends, churches, and organizations) with an easy way to support goals and activities that are of interest, importance, and value to the crowd.
For more information on Crowdfunding, contact The Ohio Business Development Center at OhioBusinessDevelomentCenter.com.
