What makes crowdfunding a better option for charities?

Crowdfunding is transforming fundraising for charities by making it easier and more transparent than ever before. So, whether your cause is big or small, local or national, rest assured that a crowdfunder can help with raising money for charity by allowing you to reach more supporters and achieve your goals faster.

Read on as we explore the different ways crowdfunding in Australia can help charities with all their fundraising needs.

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Charities can reach more people with crowdfunding

Charities can attain a bigger reach and make a bigger impact for their cause. Online campaigns give you the opportunity to ask the crowds of the internet to donate to your campaign, giving you access to funds from an audience much wider than your charity's donor list. 

Thanks to the digital nature of a crowdfunder, you can reach potential donors all over the world, making it easier than ever before to scale your charity campaign and receive more charitable donations in Australia. The sky's the limit!

Charities can align with a reputable crowdfunding platform

An important way to make sure your charity campaign is a success is to align yourself with a reputable platform. Make sure it complies with the law, is well run and meets the needs of your charity and your donors. You can read more about finding the right platform here: How to trust a crowdfunder.

Your potential donors will decide whether or not to trust your campaign based on the platform you are using, so it’s important to take the time to research your options. If your supporters don’t feel like they can trust where their money is going, it will jeopardise your donations and potentially your charity's brand reputation.

Crowdfunding increases transparency 

Because it’s digital, there is better transparency when it comes to charities and fundraising. This is a win-win for both charities and donors. 

Fundraising has many rules, laws, and legislation that demand more transparency from charities and individuals starting fundraisers. This is a good thing as it protects both parties. 

Before the digital fundraiser, there was little to no transparency for donors on some important topics such as where funds were going, how they were getting there and how much would be kept by the charities. This left plenty of opportunities for fundraisers whose intentions were not pure! The laws, terms and conditions and ramifications of online crowdfunding in Australia now make it harder for charities to engage in bad and illegal behaviour.

You can read more about state and territory fundraising regulators and legislation on the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission (ACNC) Charity Fundraising page. 

Flexible charity campaigns

Unlike traditional fundraising, crowd funding can easily be stopped, started or extended in response to the performance of the campaign. This means you won’t be wasting valuable funds on campaigns that aren’t taking off, and you don't miss out on donations from successful campaigns that have reached their end date.

The decreased financial risk of crowd funding means that charities are free to try new and interesting ventures and experiment more with messaging and marketing approaches. It doesn’t cost any extra to run concurrent campaigns for the same cause to see which messaging your donors respond to more.

In addition, platforms make it easy to choose how you promote your campaign, so you can easily scale up your social media or digital presence, or if your platform offers unique QR codes, you can include print items, posters and flyers in the marketing mix, without having to build new web pages.

You can read more about the difference between traditional fundraising and crowdfunding here.

Start raising funds!

If all this sounds like a good option to add to your fundraising mix, talk to one of our passionate experts today!

With icause, you can set up a dedicated charity page for ongoing fundraising, create a campaign or organise an event. You can also send emails or SMS campaigns directly from your icause dashboard or app, manage your campaign and track donations.

Further reading

What is Crowdfunding?

Fundraising tips

How do I know if I can trust a crowdfunder?

Crowd funding vs Traditional Fundraising

Introducing Switch and Donate