Crowdfund Newbie:Carlos and the Bulldogs
By Ambrose Moses, III
OhioMBE – April 1, 2014
By day Carlos runs a small handyman business and takes care of his family. Then, one night per week and on Saturday morning, he gets together with the ferocious, non-all-star, brick-throwing, slow-motion running, fun-loving Midtown Bulldogs.
The Midtown Bulldogs is a recreation basketball team with 11 team members. They win some. They lose some. But they always have fun. Carlos plays guard.
The team learned that Carlos needed to raise $2,500 to purchase some new tools for his business. The new tools would help him get some of the repair jobs completed quicker. Thus, he could get more done in a day and make more money.
Rob suggested that the team do a crowdfund campaign to help Carlos’s business. Rob explained that crowdfunding is a way for the team to raise money to help Carlos’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, Carlos agreed to give discounts in exchange for the contributions. With that information, Rob set up the crowdfund campaign on a popular crowdfunding website. Rob provided each Bulldog with a link to the crowdfunding campaign and asked them to send it out to their network of family, friends, and contacts.
Rob and Carlos 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 Carlos’s handyman equipment 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, please contact the Ohio Business Development Center at www.OhioBDC.com
