Guidebook

Your ultimate handbook to make

your campaign a success!
01
Conceptualising
Your Campaign
A campaign has 5 major elements that you should keep in mind
while conceptualising it:

The Story
What’s the story behind your campaign?
Focus on your theory of change i.e what is it that you wish to achieve. It must be a tangible goal.
Remember, people don’t relate to what you are doing, they relate to why you are doing it. Keep
the story personal and share what inspired you to take up the project. You must note that if there
is an inherent urgency in a campaign, then that becomes the centre of the story.

The Campaigner
Be prepared to be the power campaigner.
Success of any crowdfunding campaign is primarily dependent on the campaigner’s
proactiveness. So, pull your socks up and be ready to get your hands dirty. You have got a lot
of talking, sharing and convincing to do.
Don’t forget to get your forces together - figure out what your team is missing and get the right
people onboard.

The Community
Where’s your community?
You need to evaluate who is most likely to fund you a.k.a the target community and how you
can use them while running your campaign.Your community could include your friends, family,
colleagues and people who are passionate about the kind of project you are raising funds
for. Figure out ways in which you can reach out to them - Your objective should be to create
a group of evangelists who can spread the word for you and make sure your campaign is a
roaring success.

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 Conceptualising Your Campaign - Contd.

The Outreach
Plan your outreach and get creative with it.
You need to tell your story to as many people as you can. You will have to reach out to people
outside your first degree of network. Newspapers, magazine, bloggers, or even celebrities will
help you reach out to a larger pool of people and increase your target audience base. Ideally,
you should prepare a list of potential outreach partners and draft a press release while you are
still in the phase of conceptualising your campaign.

The Incentive
Why should someone fund you?
Incentives drive contributions - you could incentivise through rewards or by creating a
conversation that everyone would like to be a part of.
Plan your rewards in advance - make sure they are related to your campaign. Put yourself in the
contributors’ shoes and think what would be exciting enough for you to contribute. Also, have a
look at successful campaigns in your category to understand what sort of rewards/conversation
would work for your campaign.

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02
`

Preparing for
your campaign `

Here are a few things that you should keep in mind while
preparing for your campaign:

Research
• The best way to know what to expect out of your campaign and prepare for it is to check
out successful campaigns of your category. Feel free to reach out to the campaigners,
understand what worked or didn’t work for them.
• Spend some time to finalise some good rewards with respect to your campaign - make
slabs, figure out logistics and costs.
• Make a list of journalists who usually cover stories like yours. It will come handy when you are
ready to pitch to the press.

Start bringing the Crowd together

Crowdfunding is a BYOC (bring your own crowd) exercise. Do the following to gear up for your
campaign:
• Make a list of your initial funders - start talking to them about it and make them part of your
crowdfunding journey.
• Get your core crowdfunding team together.
• Get basic creatives in place - statistics and visuals that can explain your theory of change
work best.
• Start talking about your campaign through blogs and your social media channels and collect
feedback.

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03
Building a
great campaign
This is an important step - putting together the right pitch for your
campaign is crucial for success.

Create your personal pitch video

The pitch video is your medium to introduce yourself and your project. Pitch videos are actually
the most viewed item on our campaign page. So we would say that it’s the most popular way
for contributors to engage with your story.
• Make sure your video has a crisp narrative, a clear call to action and overall have a personal
feel to it.
• Your video should be engaging and should not be more than 2-minutes
• We advise you against using videos that are not your own.
• Visual elements attract more audience. So make sure you always use a video with lots of
figures, charts and maps to pitch your idea to your target audience and connect with them
better.

Tell a story that starts a conversation

Your campaign story should ideally have the following structure:

The Introduction
• Summarise what you are raising funds for. Include your Theory of Change i.e. what is it that
the funds will help you do. Don’t forget to:
• Introduce yourself.
• Briefly describe your campaign, and why it is so important to you.
• Make sure you explain the magnitude of what contributors will help you achieve.

The Pitch & Impact

• Feel free to go into the details and explain more about your campaign, and let people know

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 Building a great campaign - Contd.

what difference their contribution will make.

• Explain why your project/ campaign is valuable to the contributor and to the world. Include
images, videos or prototype renders.
• Point out success stories, achievements and personal narratives. It helps to positively
reinforce why what you are doing is important.
• Keep it real and build trust.
• Include your rewards in the main narrative as well, explain why you want to offer them as
rewards.

The Risks and Challenges

• Do not shy away from explaining any road-blocks you have already faced, or what hurdles
can crop up in the future.
• Describe your strategy on how you intend on overcoming these challenges.

How these Funds will be used

Break it down further, and get the contributors excited. Here are a few points you can talk
about:
• Explain how much funding you need, and where exactly it will be going.
• Be transparent and specific about what you are raising funds for.
• Excite the contributors with your unique perks.
• Be sure you mention how the funds will be utilized if you are unable to reach the target
amount.

Set a realistic goal for your campaign

It’s really important to choose the right campaign goal - it’s what determines the success of your
campaign and people always want to be part of a winning campaign.
• While setting your campaign goal, you need to know what is the bare minimum for you to
make the project happen - that’s probably your campaign goal.
• We recommend doing a reverse calculation of how many people will have to contribute for
you to make your campaign successful, it’s a great reality check. You can take the average
contribution to be around Rs. 1000.
• If the total budget is really big, consider breaking down your campaign into small
components and raise money for one of them.
• Remember that you can always be overfunded.

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 Building a great campaign - Contd.

Give back with rewards

Your rewards incentivize people to contribute to your campaign. So keep them engaging,
creative and diverse. They have the ability to convert a Rs. 500 contribution into a Rs. 5,000
contribution!
• There are three types of rewards - appreciation, recognition & exclusive rewards.
- Appreciation rewards could be social media shout outs or a thank you note.
- Recognition rewards are mostly credits, naming a limited edition of the product or wall of
fame for the contributors
- Exclusive rewards can be really interesting - Think exclusive merchandise, invites to
an event.
• Rewards should be related to your project and should be something that keeps the
community connected with you at all times.
• Factor in the prices of the rewards in your target. They should ideally come out of the funds
you raise via your campaign.

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04
Raising funds on
your campaign
Once your campaign is approved and live, here’s what you have
to do to make sure that your campaign reaches it’s funding goal.

Plan for the first week

The first seven days of your campaign are crucial. Your goal is to ensure that you get as many
contributions as possible.These initial contributions will help keep the momentum going for the
rest of your campaigning period.
• Your personal network is instrumental in getting you the initial traction. They will be your first
batch of contributors. Go back to your initial funders’ list and start reaching out to them.
• Start the social media conversation - use visuals, promote your campaign video, do a launch
twitter chat. Use your networks.
• Call people - Don’t shy away from picking up the phone. Call people and then constantly
follow up with them either via calls, emails and text messages.
• Different people require different motivations. Divide your contact sheet into multiple lists
and use a combination of different techniques for your outreach. Observe different groups
reactions to different campaigns and adjust accordingly.

Keep the Social Media conversation consistent

• Share your campaign creatives - statistics, visuals and your campaign video. Keep sharing
the campaign link in different ways.
• Blog about your campaign - use personal stories to reinforce what you are trying to do. Try
Medium, LinkedIn Pulse or Quora to tap into existing communities.
• Profile your contributors, thank them on facebook or twitter and don’t forget to tag them.
• Talk about highlights of your campaign like total money raised, number . of contributors, etc
by creating infographics. Try Info.gram or Canva.
• A lot of contributors share their own stories while contributing, don’t forget to further share
their stories on your social media/website.
• Jump into existing trends and start conversations. Reach out to popular influencers, get

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 Raising funds on your Campaign - Contd.

them to retweet or get into a partnership with them.

• Search for hashtags that resemble your campaigns. Connect with people talking about the
issues related to your campaign.

Reach out to Journalists

Once your campaign starts getting traction and you have more stories to share, start reaching
out to your journalist list. Send them a press release or a brief note on what you are doing. Invite
them for coffee and share your story.
Download your press release template

Find Outreach partners

Look for partnerships with online journals, blogs, popular magazines or a brand with a decent
outreach.
• There are many online platforms like Youth Ki Awaaz, The Quint or News Laundry that would
be happy to be part of your conversation - pull them in.
• If you are also looking for sponsors, profiling them on your online campaign is a good
deliverable. You can also ask them to double the contributions on the campaign.
• Reach out to Radio channels (tweet to the RJs, they are really proactive) or TV channels for a
wider outreach.

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05 `
After your
campaign ends
Once your campaign is over, it’s important to keep your
community engaged and updated on how your project is doing.

Thank your community

Your community is the most important when you are running a campaign and hence you must
let them know how thankful you are for their unconditional support. Don’t forget that they are
your initial supporters and are invested in what you are working towards.
• Make a video of what you were planning to achieve with the funds and post it as an update
• Send an infographic with the highlights of the campaign

Send out rewards

• Keep updating your contributors on the status of their rewards.
• Learn how to handle delays. Communicate the reason for the delay in a clear and lucid
manner. Throw in something extras if it’s a big enough delay.
• Add a personal touch to the rewards, it’s always appreciated.

Keep your community updated

• Post about your ongoing journey while running your project. Post about the challenges and
the hardships you face. Keep them engaged. Treat your contributors as your community.
• Share details of how the funds are being used. Transparency is always appreciated.

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Start a campaign today!

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