This document provides tips for successful crowdfunding campaigns. It discusses why organizations turn to crowdfunding by cutting out middlemen and engaging communities of readers, listeners and viewers. It uses the example of Krautreporter, a German publication that raised over 1 million Euros through crowdfunding. The document offers rules of thumb for setting realistic funding goals based on community size, provides examples, and discusses how to build a community, communicate effectively with backers, and improve the chances of fundraising success.

4. Why
crowdfund?
• Cut out the middle men
• Team up with your readers,
listeners, viewers
• Screw advertising

5. What is Krautreporter?
• Crowdfunding in May/June 2014
• 17.000 members, around M1€/y1
budget
• daily longform background stories
• close collaboration with our members
• Crowdfunding to kickstart
membership model

7. • Special enterst of a tight
community
• High personal engagement
• New role of journalists –
consumers become participants
Why
pay for journalism?

8. Members are experts

12. #1: How to calculate
a realistic funding goal
• Rule of thumb No.1: Around 5 percent
of your community will support you
• with around 20 to 30 Euros on
average
• Community = only people that you
are able to contact in time before
your campaign ends

13. Examples

14. Example KR
• €900,000 funding goal,
€60 membership
• 900,000 / 60 = 15,000 people
• 15,000 = 5%
300,000 = 100%
• we needed to reach
300,000 interested people

15. #2 How to pick
the right funding goal
• Rule of thumb No.2: Always ask
for the smallest amount that you
can work with
• People do not stop supporting
you once you hit the 100 percent
• don't ask for less than you need
to keep your promise (obviously)

16. #3: How to build a community
and stay in contact
• Rule of thumb No.3: One third of the
money should come in within the first
week of the campaign
• that third has to come from people that
you know directly, in most cases
personally.
• So basically: In the beginning you need
to ask your family and friends for money.

17. #3: How to build a community
and stay in contact
The valley of death

18. #3: How to build a community
and stay in contact
• start building a community before
you start your campaign
• prepare for one piece of content a
day – "one good news, every day“
• Most important: think of the
campaign as a narrative – tell
your story

19. #4 Ways to improve
your chances of succeeding
• crowdfunding is not a
exchange of money for
goods, but a means of
communication
• most people will give you
what you tell them to give

20. #5: How to communicate
with your crowd
• Journalists are bad
communicators
• Communication is a job by
itself
• You’ll need help

21. writethatdown.de

22. Sebastian Esser
se@krautreporter.de
@sebastianesser