Also by Blake Boles:

College Without High SchoolBetter Than College

Copyright © 2012 by Blake Boles. All rights reserved.

The author invites you to share brief excerpts from this book in critical articles, reviews, and blog posts. Requests to reprint sizable excerpts should be directed to the publisher.

Published by Tells Peak Press: www.tellspeak.com

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Kindle ISBN: 978-0-9860119-3-1

Dedicated to the young, broke, and travel-hungry everywhere.

Contents

1. Before You Begin: Q&A

Is this guide for me?How much can I raise?What do I owe my contributors?Which crowdfunding website do you suggest I use?Who will fund my campaign?Do I need to be 18 or older?Online fundraising sounds great! Should I use it to fund every awesome trip I dream up?How do I prepare for a campaign?What’s Unschool Adventures?

2. What’s Worth Raising Money For?

3. Earn More, Spend Less

Earn More for TravelSpend Less on Travel

4. Crowdfunding Basics

A Short History of CrowdfundingMy Crowdfunding ProjectsThe Psychology of CrowdfundingGetting Started on Indiegogo

1

6

12

18

5. Smart Campaign Design

How Crowdfunding Is Different for TravelPerks: The Cake and the FrostingPerk Case StudiesMore Perk AdviceFlexible or Fixed Funding?Choosing Your Campaign LengthChoosing Your Fundraising GoalCreating the Pitch

6. Campaign Case Studies

7. Smart Campaign Promotion

Welcome to Your New Part-Time JobEthical Campaign PromotionUnethical Campaign PromotionThe Power of Connections and the Halfway MarkA Few Other Promotional ToolsAfter the Campaign

8. The Real Payoff

9. Further Reading

10. Gratitude

11. About the Author

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43

48

56

58

59

60

Before You Begin: Q&A1.

Before You Begin: Q&A 2

Before You Begin: Q&A

Is this guide for me?

If you have a big dream to explore the world, insufficient funds to do so, and the courage to find a creative solution to this problem, then this book is for you.

Want to backpack across Europe for two months? Take a full-blown gap year? Join a summer camp on the other side of the country? Attend an in-depth training program or educational program? I can help you get there.

The Unschool Adventures Guide to Online Travel Fundraising is focused on younger travelers—those in their early teens to early twenties—because they typically have the least money and the most opportunity for extended travel. But travelers of all ages will benefit from the fundraising advice found within this book.

How much can I raise?

The travel campaigns that I’ve helped build have successfully raised $1,200–$4,800. But for a well-run campaign, there is literally no limit to how much you might raise.

That being said, fundraising is not easy and shouldn’t be attempted lightly. Here are the general challenge levels to expect:

$500–$1,000 goal: Less Challenging

$1,000–$3,000 goal: Challenging

$3,000–$5,000 goal: Very Challenging

$5,000–$10,000 goal: Extremely Challenging

Before You Begin: Q&A 3

What do I owe my contributors?

The type of fundraising promoted in this book is not charitable giving, where you simply ask people for donations. Instead, it’s a specific type of fundraising called crowdfunding, in which you design and offer “perks” in exchange for every contribution. The best perks make use of your unique talents.

Which crowdfunding website do you suggest I use?

This book focuses on Indiegogo, one of the original crowdfunding websites and the one friendliest to travel-oriented campaigns.

Who will fund my campaign?

Know this now: there is no army of anonymous philanthropic donors waiting for you on the Internet! In other words, just because you create an online fundraising campaign, don’t expect random strangers to donate to it. Maybe they will once or twice, but never consistently.

So who will contribute to your campaign?

Your first and best donors will be the people who typically support you in other realms of life: your immediate family, extended family, family friends, and personal friends.

The next donors will come from your face-to-face communities: your educational circle, workplace, sports team, drama group, or place of worship.

Your online communities—Facebook friends, Twitter followers, blog readers—will also contribute.

Finally, you’ll receive donations from people who don’t know you personally but who heard about you through the grapevine: the “six degrees of separation” phenomenon.

Having more social connections, especially face-to-face connections, will drastically improve your chances of fundraising success.

Before You Begin: Q&A 4

Do I need to be 18 or older?

You may run an online fundraising campaign at any age. You will need access to a PayPal account (and possibly a checking account) in order to collect your funds. For minors, a parent typically provides these accounts.

Online fundraising sounds great! Should I use it to fund every awesome trip I dream up?

No! Launching back-to-back campaigns, especially for trips that you could conceivably fund yourself, will quickly alienate potential contributors.

Online fundraising is not about seeking handouts for every goal in life. Instead, it’s about exercising your creative and entrepreneurial muscles to seize a big, life-changing travel opportunity that you clearly cannot afford on your own.

How do I prepare for a campaign?

Work hard toward your travel goal in whatever way you can.

Did you work and save for months before starting this campaign? Conduct hundreds of hours of background research? Study a language intensely? These are the kinds of committed actions that will earn you sympathy and generate a lot of energy for your campaign.

Did you just think up this trip yesterday? Have you not yet researched the important facts and costs behind the trip? Are you not really committed to going? Then it’s not time to run a fundraiser. Crowdfunding is a powerful tool that should be used sparingly.

Before You Begin: Q&A 5

What’s Unschool Adventures?

I’m glad you asked! Unschool Adventures (http://www.unschooladventures.com) is my travel and education company. Since 2008, I’ve been organizing and leading adventures for groups of self-directed young adults. Sometimes our programs go internationally—to Argentina or Australia, for example—and sometimes we stay in the United States for writing retreats and leadership programs.

In my time running Unschool Adventures, I often hear young people say, “Blake, I’d love to go on a big trip, but I just can’t afford it.”

This book is my answer to that eternal roadblock.

Now, let’s get started. You’ve got places to go.

What’s Worth Raising Money For?

2.

What’s Worth Raising Money For? 7

What’s Worth Raising Money For?

When I was 14, a vicious insect attacked me. It sunk its long fangs into my skin, injected its venom, and hasn’t let go since.

I’m describing, of course, the travel bug.

If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably been bit by a travel bug too. And if this bug refused to let go, then like me, you think about travel all the time.

At age 14, I traveled to Chile for a monthlong summer homestay. My dad, a longtime traveler and Spanish-speaker himself, suggested the idea, and I leapt for it. Having taken only one Spanish class in my life, I later realized that I was the youngest and most inexperienced Spanish-speaker of this multi-age high school group. ¡Que sorpresa!

Our group flew to Santiago, took a bus south to Rancagua, and then split up to join individual homestay families. Over the following month I had little contact with my English-speaking group members. My host family graciously engaged me in long, awkward conversations in which I spent half the time looking at the ceiling, snapping my fingers, and muttering as I attempted to remember a certain adjective or verb conjugation. During dinner one night, I asked my host mother to pass me the avocado, which in my Spanglish came out as abogado, which means “lawyer” in actual Spanish. Pass the salt, pepper, and lawyer, would you mother?

On my second night, my host brother, age 15, took me out to the local high school gym for a punk music show. (The band’s name: Los Tetas. I’ll let you translate that one.) Rancagua, a medium-sized city with no significant tourist attractions, didn’t get many North American visitors, so I became an instant celebrity. One girl immediately claimed me as her boyfriend. Behind the blasting speakers of Los Tetas, I heard her name as “Varvala,” which struck me as very exotic. It took me a week of being her boyfriend (read: boy-toy) to discover that her name was actually “Barbara” (much less exotic), a mistake that introduced me to the nuances of Chilean dialect.

What’s Worth Raising Money For? 8

My homestay continued with such memorable trials and errors. In Latin America, many young people start drinking alcohol at age 13. Thus, my host brother and his friends inevitably introduced me to pisco, the cheapest and most abundant liquor in Chile. One night of passing the bottle and clutching the toilet gave me a strong lesson in the stupidity of drinking to excess—and a memory that I cherish to this day.

At the end of the month, I said adios to my host family with much-improved Spanish and joined the other U.S. group members for a week of snowboarding in the mountain town of Chillán. I remember carving first tracks down a steep groomed trail, CD player blasting tunes through my headphones (yes, a CD player—I’m old), with a panorama of the snow-covered Andes filling my vision. This outdoor adventure iced the cake of an already incredible monthlong learning and growing experience. I returned home feeling truly blessed—and ready for the next adventure.

Would I be the same person I am today were it not for Chile? I doubt it. Chile was a trip worth raising money for.

Blake and “Varvala”

What’s Worth Raising Money For? 9

When I started college, I worked part-time to pay for short trips to Mexico and Canada, plus a few weekend backpacking trips. At age 19, my closest friend from high school called me and asked if I wanted to go to Europe for five weeks. He and two other friends had been planning a way for all of us to travel together, and the upcoming summer was virtually the only opportunity. The cost: $3,000. I worked to cover $1,500 of the trip myself, and my family contributed the other $1,500.

That summer we visited eight Western European countries, hopping Eurail trains from city to city, sleeping at cheap hostels, visiting too many art museums, and forming temporary partnerships with other backpackers. I played Frisbee in the Swiss Alps, bargained for a seaside apartment rental on the Italian Riviera, and “freestyle walked” in front of every major European monument.

It’s difficult to describe the sense of joy, empowerment, and adventure that I brought home with me from Europe. If you’ve undertaken a voyage of similar magnitude, you probably know what it feels like.

Was Europe a trip worth raising money for? Unquestionably.- - -

Freestyle Walking in Paris

What’s Worth Raising Money For? 10

Travel can change your life. But travel can be expensive.

My Chile and Europe trips changed my life. And like many people, I relied upon my family and minimum-wage work to fund these adventures. (Later at age 23, when I enjoyed more earning power, I was able to fully pay my own way for a three-month trip through South America.)

But fortune does not always work in our favor.

What if my father, a small business owner, had been weathering a downturn when I was 14 and hadn’t been able to send me to Chile? I would have been in the exact same position to benefit from that experience but would have lacked the opportunity. The same goes for Europe at 19.

You may be familiar with the feeling of working hard for months or years to save for a big trip. This is an invaluable part of the travel process, and one that makes the reward all the sweeter.

But you may also know what it feels like to work hard toward a travel goal and remain utterly distant from it. This scenario is most prevalent among young adults ages 16 to 23, those with the lowest wage-earning power yet the most freedom to travel. Think, for instance, of the 19-year-old working long hours in a climbing gym or the underemployed recent college graduate making ends meet as a barista.

For the broke and travel-hungry, there are three options.

1. Travel more cheaply. Head to Central America instead of Europe; go for one month instead of two; use your parent’s old backpack instead of buying the glimmering new one in the outdoors store. 2. Figure out how to quickly boost your earning power (or save more of what you already earn) in order to afford a trip.

3. Don’t travel yet. Postpone your plans until an unknown future date.

I think everyone should learn how to do numbers one and two. (We’ll discuss these tactics in the “Earn More, Spend Less” section.) But not everyone should defer their travel dreams, because sometimes there are golden opportunities that deserve to be seized.

What’s Worth Raising Money For? 11

Such an opportunity may be the gap year that you take between high school and college: your one big chance to see the world before another four, six, or eight years of school. Or perhaps it’s a trip that you and your two close friends finally have the chance to take together. Or it’s when a rare educational opportunity suddenly appears, such as a multi-month apprenticeship with your favorite artist on the other side of the country.

Imagine that you’re 19, you’ve been studying French for years, and then an organized trip to France appears. It’s destined for all the major cities that you’ve dreamed of visiting, and the maximum age for participation is 19. Despite working part-time jobs for the past few years, you’re a thousand dollars shy of the required program fee.

What if you’re 16 or 23 and you’re dying to see the world, but your life is filled with obligations to family, school, or a significant other? Suddenly, a door opens, and you finally have a chance to get away. But your savings won’t cut it, and that door won’t open again for a very long time.

In moments like these, if you wait, you lose. This is when life demands a fast and creative fundraising solution.

Fundraising is not a silver bullet. Just like a job or entrepreneurial venture, fundraising demands time, focus, and dedication. If you fundraise too often, for a frivolous cause, or for something that could reasonably provide for yourself, you’ll fail to meet your goals and you’ll alienate your supporters.

But you shouldn’t think of fundraising as the domain of mooches and freeloaders, either. Your friends, family, and community members know an important opportunity when they see one. And when they observe that you’ve been working toward your big travel goal, they’ll be happy to help. Not only will they enjoy the perks that they receive in exchange for their contributions, they’ll appreciate living vicariously through your adventure.

This is the power of online fundraising: it allows you to bridge the gap between your funds and your dreams and seize a big, meaningful opportunity. What Chile and Europe did for me, I hope that your travels will do for you.

Earn More, Spend Less3.

Earn More, Spend Less 13

Earn More, Spend Less

Before planning a fundraiser, every traveler should ask himself or herself these two questions:

1. Can I spend less money on this trip than I currently think I need?

2. Can I earn and save this money, on my own, within the time available to me?

If, by answering these questions, you can balance your savings and expenditures, fantastic! You have no need for fundraising. Your life will be simpler.

If you answer no to these questions, then it’s time for fundraising. But that doesn’t mean you should forget about cutting costs or working toward your trip. A successful fundraising campaign always begins with demonstrating that you have minimized the amount of money that you’re trying to raise.

Below, I briefly outline the many traditional and nontraditional ways for a young adult to earn more, save more, and spend less on travel. Even if these approaches don’t bring you significantly closer to your goal, they’ll earn you sympathy from campaign contributors.

Earn More for Travel

Traditional Tactics

Let’s begin with the obvious: get a job. But don’t waste all your time “job hunting,” a.k.a. browsing Craigslist or handing out résumés to anyone who makes eye contact with you. If a thorough search doesn’t reveal a decent job in your area (a definite possibility), move on to other tactics.

If a family member or friend owns a business, ask if there’s any way you can help out. If the answer is no, ask if they know any other business owners that might need your help.

Earn More, Spend Less 14

Perform basic 1950s-era services for neighbors and community members: clean houses, babysit, rake yards, etc.

Throw an event such as a yard sale, bake sale, car wash, live music event, talent show, spaghetti dinner, silent auction, or bingo game. Ask your friends and family to help organize and run it. Advertise the fact that all profits go toward your trip.

If your trip has a charitable or philanthropic purpose, ask local businesses about sponsorship opportunities.

Research the Rotary foundation scholarship. Through Rotary, a former Unschool Adventures student, Dani, did a ten-month homestay in Belgium at age 16 for just a few thousand dollars, including flights and all expenses.

Entrepreneurial Tactics

If you’re a crafter or artist, sell your work on Etsy.com.

If you can think up witty phrases or do basic graphic design, create and sell t-shirts through sites like Cafepress.com, Zazzle.com or Skreened.com.

Sell popsicles or another basic food item at a conference or other large community gathering. Ask permission from the organizer first. (I witnessed teenagers earning $200+ per day doing this.)

Design a website, blog, Facebook page, logo, or other basic technological asset for someone who sorely lacks one.

Tutor local school students in an academic subject. Advertise and conduct lessons in your local library.

Buy and resell an inexpensive item. Sometimes you can work with a company, like Krispy Kreme donuts, which will provide you with discounted products that you may then resell at regular price. Other times, you’ll need to find or create your own resale item. For example, order rubber wrist bands imprinted with the inspirational message, “I helped send Blake to Uzbekistan!” for $0.25 each, and then resell them for $1.

Earn More, Spend Less 15

Offer to sell and ship your family’s unwanted stuff on eBay or Craigslist. Ask for 50% of the net profits.

Busk.

For all of the above tactics, be sure to highlight your travel goals when pitching yourself.

Tactics for Saving What You Earn

If you have a job, get your paycheck directly deposited into your checking account. Then open a savings account and automatically transfer 20% of your paycheck from checking to savings every payday. If you never see the money in your checking account in the first place, you’ll miss it less.

While saving for your trip, live with your parents to save money on rent. Eat rice and beans. Say no to friends asking you to join expensive evening activities and yes to library books and Netflix movies.

Ask your friends which three things you spend money most frivolously on. (Don’t just ask yourself, because it probably won’t seem frivolous.) Energy drinks? Music shows? Shoes? Compare the cost of these items to one day’s living expenses in the place where you’d like to travel.

Spend Less on Travel

Get clear about your travel goals. Do you really want to go to Italy, or do you want to go somewhere romantic with good food, and Italy just happened to be your first thought? Spend an hour flipping through travel guidebooks in a bookstore and then ask yourself what other, cheaper destinations might fulfill the same goals.

Use airline miles to pay for flights whenever possible. If you don’t have any, offer to pay your parents or friends to use them for you at a rate that would still leave you with a discounted ticket.

Earn More, Spend Less 16

Sign up for one of the many credit card promotions that offers tens of thousands of miles just for enrolling. Just one of these promotions can earn you a round-trip plane ticket within North America.

Save money on travel within the United States with ridesharing. Search your local Craigslist.org rideshare board.

Remember the basic tenets of budget travel: Avoid peak season. Sleep in hostels or campgrounds, not hotels. Eat primarily from grocery stores instead of restaurants. Travel on the slow bus instead of the bullet train. Wait for the free museum day. Read, write, hike, converse, play cards, or toss a Frisbee instead of taking expensive tours, bungee jumping, or doing any of the hundreds of other activities designed specifically to suck tourists’ money from their pockets.

Read Vagabonding by Rolf Potts.

Get a smaller backpack. It will force you to take (and purchase) less junk.

Volunteer or intern while traveling. Use the following sites to find excellent opportunities: HelpX.net, Workaway.info, WWOOF.org, and Idealist.org.

Work while traveling. Due to the trouble of obtaining a visa, work opportunities tend to be temporary gigs in the service industry (e.g., hostels and restaurants) that are paid “under the table.” Planning ahead isn’t useful for such opportunities; simply show up and see what’s available. Prepare to stick around one place for a month (and ideally multiple months) for your best chances of employment.

You might be able to fulfill your travel urge by getting a job that involves travel or the outdoors, like those in summer camps, National Parks, farms, or cruise ships. Search for opportunities on these sites: Coolworks.com, Backdoorjobs.com, OutdoorEd.com, AllCruiseJobs.com, and GoodFoodJobs.com.

Teach English abroad. Emerging economies are hungry for native English speakers, so hungry that they’ll pay for your flights, room, and board, and give you a stipend if you commit to teach for up to a year. Visit ESLcafe.com to browse a seemingly endless number of job postings. Stay away from the ones that demand a big fee.

Earn More, Spend Less 17

Ask your friends, family, and community members if they know someone who lives in your destination and who would be willing to put you up for a few nights (or weeks!).

Meet interesting locals and spend almost nothing on lodging with Couchsurfing.org or Servas.org.

Crowdfunding Basics4.

Crowdfunding Basics 19

Crowdfunding Basics

Before jumping into the mechanics of a crowdfunding campaign, let’s address a few important questions. Where did crowdfunding begin? What was it designed for? What are its benefits beyond the obvious monetary aspect? Then I’ll then introduce you to Indiegogo, the best platform for online travel fundraising.

A Short History of Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding emerged at the turn of the twenty-first century as a tool for bands who wanted to produce an album but couldn’t get signed by a major record label. Instead of waiting to get signed, these artists solicited small contributions from their fans in order to independently produce a professional-quality album. The first music-focused crowdfunding website, ArtistShare.com, launched in 2001.

Crowdfunding then crept into film, another industry in which small producers are beset by high entry costs. Indiegogo launched in 2008 at the Sundance Film Festival as a platform for independent filmmakers.

When Kickstarter launched in 2009, crowdfunding took off. Soon, Kickstarter and Indiegogo became to the two largest crowdfunding platforms, followed closely by a host of imitators. Crowdfunding became a platform for artists of all stripes to fund and launch new projects, whether in visual art, comics, dance, design, fashion, film and video, food, gaming, music, photography, theatre, websites, or writing.

In 2012, technology gadget designers set the bar for the most highly funded crowdfunding projects, raising $10 million for a programmable digital watch (Pebble) and $8.5 million for a new game console (Ouya). Video game projects started raising multimillion dollar sums as well, kicked off by the $3.3 million success of Double Fine Adventure.

While Kickstarter was grabbing the glory for these highly funded projects, Indiegogo quietly started gathering steam in a different sector: “cause” campaigns, such as those oriented around animals, community, education, environment, health, politics, and religion.

Crowdfunding Basics 20

The two companies also took widely divergent paths in regard to campaign submissions. Kickstarter opted to pick and choose between campaigns in order to cultivate a certain look, feel, and professionalism. Indiegogo accepted almost any project that fell within their (very broad) guidelines.

My Crowdfunding Projects

I took the leap into crowdfunding in May 2011 when I wanted to turn my blog, Zero Tuition College, into a social network. I first pitched the idea to Kickstarter and they turned me down. That led me to Indiegogo, where I launched my first campaign (http://www.indiegogo.com/Zero-Tuition-College). By offering t-shirts, beta-testing privileges, book packs, and personal coaching, I raised $2,370, $370 beyond my initial goal.

Eight months later I was at it again, turning Zero Tuition College into a full-fledged book. I pitched Kickstarter, and again they weren’t interested. Their loss! The Indiegogo campaign for my book, Better Than College, raised $9,200 ($1,700 beyond its goal), providing me with the startup capital necessary to professionally edit, design, and independently publish my manuscript (http://www.indiegogo.com/btc).

While working on these projects, I was also directing my travel and educational company, Unschool Adventures. Whenever I spoke at conferences or camps, many young people and their parents asked me how to afford a big international trip or educational program. In response, I wrote a blog post about crowdfunding for travel, projects, and education. Taking my advice, four teenagers then launched campaigns that raised between $1,200 and $4,800, earning them passage to foreign countries or summer camps.

While I was overjoyed that young people were successfully raising money to travel the world, I also noticed they tended to fall into a few traps. That led me to write this book and (you guessed it!) launch an Indiegogo campaign to help publish it (http://www.indiegogo.com/go-travel-more). This final campaign raised $1,634 of its $1,500 goal.

Crowdfunding Basics 21

The Psychology of Crowdfunding

The obvious benefit of crowdfunding is that it helps you do something that you cannot afford on your own, like produce a record, publish a book, or travel abroad. But just as importantly, crowdfunding helps you commit to something big, whether that is making music, writing, or traveling.

Many crowdfunding campaigns are essentially pre-sales. Just like when you preorder a book on Amazon.com, a crowdfunding backer is paying you for a perk (e.g., a book, album, photograph) that you haven’t yet produced.

When I launched the campaign for Better Than College, all I had was a manuscript on Microsoft Word—no cover art, no professional editing, and no ISBN. But as soon as I accepted my first campaign contribution, I realized: I’m bound to this project now, and I have to see it through to the end.

This is the psychological benefit of crowdfunding. By preselling the results of your future or unfinished project, you commit yourself to actually completing that project.

Consider crowdfunding a form of self-inflicted, positive peer pressure. It works because when you don’t complete your project, you aren’t just letting yourself down. You’re letting down the backers who have given you their money and trust.

Of course, the psychological tactic of getting someone to commit to a project by accepting money before it’s completed has been long-employed by book publishers and record labels, to name only two industries. Writers sign book deals, musicians sign record deals, and each receives an “advance” against future earnings. If they don’t turn in their manuscripts or songs on time (or the work is not of expected quality), then the publishing company can simply revoke their advances.

The big difference between a book or record deal and a crowdfunding campaign is enforceability. If you don’t send out your crowdfunding perks on time (or they’re not of the quality you promised), contributors don’t have an easy way to get their money back. They’re not a large corporation with a legal department; they’re individual people with $25 or $100 to contribute to a starving artist or budding traveler. Indiegogo and Kickstarter don’t have an enforcement team that will kick down your door if you fail to deliver your perks.

Crowdfunding Basics 22

The issue here is trust. Don’t lose the trust of the friends, family, and community members who supported your campaign by not following through on what you said you’d do. Think hard before you launch a campaign, offering only promises and perks that you can deliver. That’s when the psychology of crowdfunding will work positively for you.

Getting Started on Indiegogo

At this point, our focus shifts to Indiegogo. Why? Because Kickstarter does not allow travel or other “cause” campaigns—only creative projects. That’s okay: Indiegogo offers a powerful platform for travel fundraising, even if it lacks the household name and polished look of Kickstarter.

To begin, visit Indiegogo.com and browse a few campaigns. You’ll notice that each shares the following features:

a specific fundraising goal

a specific time limit (not visible on completed campaigns)

a choice of two funding models, Flexible Funding or Fixed Funding

space for a text description and a prominent photo or video

a list of available perks and their costs

social-media sharing tools

Goal and Time Limit

Upon launching, every campaign must designate a fundraising goal and time limit. The goal may be almost any amount of money. The time limit may be up to 60 or 120 days, depending on your funding model. Indiegogo makes it difficult to change your goal or time limit after launching, but if you write the support department directly, they sometimes make exceptions.

Crowdfunding Basics 23

Funding Model

Indiegogo offers a choice of two funding models: Flexible Funding and Fixed Funding.

When you choose the Fixed Funding model, you’re electing to use a Kickstarter-style, all-or-nothing fundraising campaign. That means that when you receive a contribution, Indiegogo will hold onto it for you and only release the funds to you at the end of the campaign if you successfully meet your goal. If, on the other hand your campaign fails to reach its goal, all contributions will be refunded and you won’t be required to deliver any perks.

With Flexible Funding—the more popular model on Indiegogo—you get to keep all the funds you raise, whether or not you reach your goal. When someone contributes to your campaign, you’re guaranteed to receive the money and you’re obliged to provide the perk associated with that contribution. (There are significant advantages and disadvantages to each model for travel campaigners, which we’ll discuss in the “Smart Campaign Design” section.)

Fees

As of late 2012, Indiegogo charges a 4% fee on funds raised for all Fixed Funding and Flexible Funding campaigns that successfully met their goals. For Flexible Funding campaigns that fail to meet their goals, Indiegogo charges 9%.

To illustrate:

If you ran a Fixed Funding (all-or-nothing) campaign with a $1,000 goal and raised $1,000, you would pay $40 (4% of $1,000) to Indiegogo in fees.

If you ran a Fixed Funding (all-or-nothing) campaign with a $1,000 goal and raised $500, you would pay nothing in fees, because all of the contributions would be canceled.

If you ran a Flexible Funding (keep-what-you-raise) campaign with a $1,000 goal and raised $1,000, you would pay $40 to Indiegogo in fees.

Crowdfunding Basics 24

If you ran a Flexible Funding (keep-what-you-raise) campaign with a $1000 goal and raised $500, you would pay $45 (9% of $500) to Indiegogo in fees.

In addition to Indiegogo’s fees, you’ll pay roughly 3% in bank fees, either as credit card processing or PayPal fees. (These are standard rates for such transactions, not some exploitative fee on Indiegogo’s part.) Add all these fees together, and you end up with:

a 7% total fee for any campaign that meets its goal

a 12% total fee for a Flexible Funding campaign that doesn’t meet its goal

Exceeding Your Goal

If your campaign meets its fundraising goal before your deadline, the party isn’t over: people can continue contributing until the time limit is reached. There is no upper limit on how much money any campaign can raise. A wildly successful Indiegogo campaign entitled Let’s Build a Goddamn Tesla Museum (http://www.indiegogo.com/teslamuseum) raised $520,461 more than its $850,000 goal, leaving it with a whopping $1,370,461. (That left Indiegogo with a cool $54,818 fee—not a bad business model!)

Perks

Perks are the bread and butter of a crowdfunding campaign. When you design your campaign, you get to custom-design up to 12 perks and designate each of their prices. Contributors select a single perk in exchange for their contribution.

As with your overall fundraising goal, people may contribute more than is necessary for a specific perk. If, for example, you’re offering a $20 perk through your campaign, it’s possible for someone to contribute $30 for that perk, leaving you with $10 of philanthropic gravy. Contributors also have the option of giving you money without selecting a perk, providing an easy path for those who simply want to donate to you and not fuss with any perks.

Crowdfunding Basics 25

Can I Start Now?

Okay, you’ve learned the basics! Now you’re ready to whip up a campaign and start making your millions, right? Wrong.

Too many people take exactly this approach. They browse a few campaigns, read the basic rules, and then launch an ugly, unedited, and unpolished monster.

Instead, let’s discuss the essentials of smart campaign design, starting with the important differences between travel fundraisers and other crowdfunding campaigns.

Smart Campaign Design5.

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Smart Campaign Design

How Crowdfunding Is Different for Travel

Spend an hour browsing campaigns on Indiegogo, and you’ll notice two types of campaigns.

First, there are what I call entrepreneurial campaigns, those that fund movies, music, gadgets, games, and other creative projects. For perks, these campaigns usually offer a copy of the final product (the movie, album, gadget, or game), access to special versions of the product, behind-the-scenes peeks, and opportunities to meet the creators in person.

Second, there are the charitable campaigns, those that raise money for disaster relief, sudden hospital bills, environmental projects, and other causes. These campaigns typically offer perks that are more symbolic, like a thank-you letter or a t-shirt.

Somewhere among these lands of entrepreneurship and charity, lives you, the travel fundraiser.

Travel fundraising is sort of like entrepreneurship. You’re trying to raise a specific amount of money to undertake a big project, and you’re offering perks in exchange for contributions.

But travel fundraising is also like charity, because unlike a movie/album/gadget/game, the outcome of your campaign isn’t a concrete product. It’s an experience. And asking someone to fund your travel experience is awfully close to asking them to fund a cause: the cause of “youth travel,” or just the cause of “you.”

But if you’re traveling for personal gain—like most travelers do—then remember that your life and travel plans don’t constitute a charitable cause. This is especially true if you come from a comfortable middle- or upper-class background.

Sympathetic friends and family will almost always donate to your campaign, simply because they like you. But unless you’re purposefully combining your travel with a true charitable cause (“Help me rehabilitate baby turtles in Costa Rica!”), don’t

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run your fundraiser like a charity campaign. If I don’t know you, I’m not going to give you $50 to travel to France just because you ask nicely.

Instead, make me a deal. Offer me a unique, compelling, useful, and meaningful perk in exchange for my donation. In other words, act like an entrepreneur.

This is the biggest challenge of travel fundraising: to make your campaign as entrepreneurial as possible. And the core of this challenge lies in creating smart perks.

Perks: The Cake and the Frosting

On Indiegogo, common perks that you’ll see on travel campaigns include $15 thank-you postcards, $30 t-shirts, and $100 “You’re So Awesome!” shout-outs. Such symbolic perks may entertain friends and family, but to a stranger, they’re fluff. They should not compose the bulk of your crowdfunding campaign.

To avoid this common trap, I advise you to think of perks in two layers: the cake and the frosting.

The foundation of what you offer—the cake—should consist of valuable perks that utilize your talents. These perks answer the question, What would someone who doesn’t know me pay me for?

Can you illustrate? Throw pottery? Edit essays? Build websites? Each of these skills can be employed to create a potential perk. For example, for $100, you could offer to custom-design a blog site. For $300, you could offer to tutor someone in music theory over Skype. For $50, you could craft a purse made from recycled plastic bags.

Common entrepreneurial perks for travel campaigns include:

handcrafts and artwork ($5–$30)

homemade food that can be mailed, like cookies or chocolates ($10–$50)

souvenirs brought back from your destination ($30–$50)

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digital or DVD copies of an informative video that you produce while traveling (providing an introduction to the country, for example) ($20–$50)

personalized instruction, coaching, or mentoring that you can provide via phone, Skype, or in person ($50–$500+, depending upon the challenge and commitment level)

I recommend that such valuable, entrepreneurial perks—the cake—constitute two-thirds of the total perks you offer.

On top of the cake lies the frosting: symbolic, nostalgia-based perks. These perks provide the contributor with a sense of meaning and appreciation.

Be very careful not to charge too much for frosting perks. Why? Because that pushes your campaign down the charity spectrum and alienates contributors. To avoid this, keep frosting perks cheap and have them constitute less than one-third of your total offering.

The best frosting perks get creative and cute. For $15, create a short video of people you meet on your trip saying “thank you” in their native languages.

Other nostalgia perks might include:

shout-outs on social media ($1–$5)

handwritten thank-you postcards, mailed from wherever you’re traveling ($5–$15)

t-shirts with a photo or phrase related to your trip ($15–$30)

personal video greetings from abroad ($20–$50)

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Perk Case Studies

Here are a few of my favorite travel campaigns that strike a nice balance between cake and frosting perks.

Von Wong Does Europe

http://www.indiegogo.com/vonwongdoeseurope

Benjamin Von Wong, a Montreal-based photographer, launched a campaign to raise $5,000 for a one-month road trip across Europe that he and his videographer would undertake to collaborate with artists across the continent. Vaulting past his goal, Von Wong raised $12,395.

Many factors contributed to Von Wong’s success, including his great video, excellent pitch, and approach of saying, “We believe in [our campaign] so much, we’ve already bought the plane tickets!” But I think none of this would have been possible without a foundation of excellent perks.

Here’s what Von Wong offered (rewritten for brevity):

$5: Facebook page shout-out.

$20: Signed Polaroid sent from Europe and a “sexy Von Wong silicone bracelet.” Plus the Facebook shout-out.

$40: Signed 8”x12” premium metallic print from the trip. Plus everything above.

$60: Three tutorials explaining the Photoshop methods used to create three of the final pictures from the tour. Plus everything above.

$75: 8”x10” hardcover book documenting the journey with exclusive behind-the-scenes footage. Plus everything at the $40 level.

$100: Same as the $60 perk, but six tutorials.

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$150: An “eDVD” of the entire project, including all behind-the-scenes videos, explanations of the shoot, and all final Photoshop tutorials. Your name listed as a “premium backer” in the video credits. Plus everything at the $40 level.

$210: The $150-level perk plus the hardcover book.

$500: “Give a free photo shoot to an inspiring artist in Europe! We will travel to, shoot and collaborate with an artist/band/crew/group of YOUR choice.” Plus everything at the $150 level.

$750: Become an “official partner” of the project, with your name or logo featured on the travel blog and all videos produced. Plus everything at the $210 level.

$1,500: Become the one and only “official sponsor” of the project—just like the $750 perk, except “prominently featured.” They will also “find you, track you down, and take you out for dinner!”

Notice how little mention of the actual European road trip was made in these perks. Instead, Von Wong focused on the valuable (cake) perks he and his partner could provide as a photographer and videographer. This was much closer to a film fundraiser than a travel fundraiser; yet it was indeed funding a massive tour of Europe. Von Wong did an excellent job of focusing on entrepreneurship over travel nostalgia.

Journey of 2,180 Miles

http://www.indiegogo.com/heathergaiahike

Heather Harvie, a wilderness therapy field instructor, sought to raise $2,180 to hike the entire Appalachian Trail: a distance of 2,180 miles. Her campaign (which was still running at the time of publishing) took a much more minimalist approach than Von Wong’s, offering a simple pitch and five straightforward perks:

$10: Thank-you postcard from the trail.

$35: Hand-knitted wool hand warmers, made to order based upon age, gender, and color preference.

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$45: Hand-carved, sanded, and oiled wooden spoon, made from Appalachian tree wood.$55: Made-to-order knitted hat.

$100: Made-to-order knitted scarf, hat, and hand warmers.

Heather cleverly timed her campaign to take place in the two months leading up to Christmas, prompting strangers (including myself ) to order some of her crafts as holiday gifts.

Sage Goes to Vermont

http://www.indiegogo.com/sage-vs-the-world

Finally, let’s examine the perks from a campaign that I helped design.

Sixteen-year-old Sage wanted to raise $1,825 to return to a summer camp that helped change her life. For Sage, the big challenge was in creating perks. When she and I started brainstorming the campaign, she claimed to have no marketable skills whatsoever.

I admitted to Sage that running a campaign at age 16 is certainly more difficult than running one at age 20 or 30, simply for the reason that you’ve had less time to develop skills that other people find valuable. But I also knew Sage to be an avid writer, budding photographer, and social media enthusiast. To me, that meant that she had some skills to offer—she just had to think about how to present them to other people. Together we crafted a list of skills- and nostalgia-based perks (biased a bit toward nostalgia in order to compensate for her age), launched the campaign, and met her goal within five days.

Sage’s perks included:

$5: Thank-you e-mail.

$10: “In addition to a thank-you e-mail, I’ll send you a REALLY FUNNY cat photo!”

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$20: A beautiful nature photograph captured by Sage while at summer camp, printed and mailed with a thank-you note.

$50: Exclusive excerpts (sent via e-mail) from the fantasy novel Sage will be writing in the upcoming months.

$150: A custom-designed blog for you, by Sage, on Wordpress, Blogspot, or Tumblr. “If you’ve ever wanted to start blogging but didn’t want to deal with the hassle of creating one, I will help you out!”

$300: A custom-made short story featuring you as the main character—plus everything else above.

More Perk Advice

Striking a balance between entrepreneurship and nostalgia is the most crucial part of successful perk design. Here are a few more principles to keep in mind:

It’s easy to tell yourself that you don’t have quality skills to offer, but you’re probably wrong. Ask a close friend, parent, or coworker to help you identify your talents and figure out how to share them with the world.

Don’t create a frosting perk that simply says, “Donate this much and I’ll think you’re awesome!” Offer something in exchange for every perk, and make sure it lines up with the cost. Expensive perks should require a genuinely larger expenditure of your time and creative energy. If you want to remind people that they can donate money without selecting a perk, do so in the pitch—not by creating an all-fluff perk.

Limit the availability of any perks that you couldn’t fulfill if lots of people ordered them. When you create a perk, you can designate how many of them are available. Use this feature whenever you cannot reasonably fulfill a large order volume. For example, you’re limited in the number of souvenirs you can bring back from a foreign country (your bag is only so big) and the amount of time you have to provide one-on-one Skype instruction (you’re only human).

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Limit the availability of high-cost perks. When Von Wong offered sponsorship and dinner out in exchange for a $1,500 contribution, the perk was magnified by the fact that only one person could claim it. Make your highest value perks feel more exclusive by limiting their quantity.

Price your perks as low as possible while ensuring that you’re left with something afterward. Providing a nice perk for a reasonable price is important. But it’s also important that you use your fundraising money for your travels, not just for providing the perks themselves. If it costs you $10 to print a custom t-shirt, don’t offer it as a $12 perk. Every perk should be worth your time to produce.

Watch out for shipping costs. I learned this the hard way when I spent $15 to ship a book to a contributor in Bermuda. If you’re shipping physical goods, calculate your shipping costs to various parts of the world and include them in your price. For international shipments, many campaigns offer a separate perk level (e.g., $20 for a book shipped anywhere in the U.S., $30 for a book shipped anywhere else in the world).

Produce excellent perks under $100. Most crowdfunding campaigns succeed through tons of small donations rather than a few big ones, according to Indiegogo (http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/2011/10/where-to-price-your-perks.html). Your perks at $10, $25, $50, $75, and $100 will probably net you the most contributions, so work hard to make them awesome.

Research what’s worked for campaigns like yours. If you’re bike touring across North America, search for campaigns with the keyword “bike.” If you’re raising money for a summer camp, search for “camp.” Harvest the best perk ideas you can find from these campaigns.

Do weird stuff. A group of friends raising money for a bike tour (http://www.indiegogo.com/theridetorio) offered a perk for $250 entitled Make Us Do Something! Their offering: “For this donation we’ll do pretty much anything you ask us to do (within reason). Set us a challenge, a dare or any other crazy task and we’ll try our best to complete it and film it for you!” Genius.

With a solid foundation of perks underneath your feet, we now turn to the other aspects of travel campaign design.

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Flexible or Fixed Funding?

As previously described, Indiegogo offers two campaign funding models, Fixed (all-or-nothing) and Flexible (keep-what-you-raise). Many people choose Flexible Funding by default, because they like the idea of walking away with something instead of nothing. But that can prove an irresponsible or less effective option than Fixed Funding. The decision is based on whether you can fulfill your perk promises if you don’t meet your goal.

Scenario 1: I’m Going, Regardless

Imagine that you’ve worked hard to save up $3,000 for a one-month India trip. At this moment, you have enough to cover your plane tickets, visa fees, and basic travel costs for the entire voyage. But if you could add $1,500 to that total, you could extend your travels for two additional months, throwing in side trips to Nepal and Pakistan.

To pursue this huge opportunity, you launch an Indiegogo campaign and devise a list of India-oriented perks, including promises to bring back souvenirs and create a short film that introduces each region of the country you visit.

In this scenario, you should run your campaign with Flexible Funding. Why? Because if you raise only a fraction of your $1,500 goal, you can still provide the perks that you promised. You’re going to India either way.

Scenario 2: I Can Only Go If ...

Now let’s imagine the same India trip, but in this case, you don’t have enough money to cover your basic costs. You’re starting with $0 and trying to raise the full $3,000 via Indiegogo. As before, you’re offering India-oriented perks like souvenirs and a travel video.

In this scenario, you should run your campaign with Fixed Funding. Why? Because if you don’t meet your $3,000 goal, then you can’t go to India, and therefore you can’t fulfill your perks.

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If you tried to raise $3,000 using Flexible Funding but only received a fraction of it, then you’d still be on the hook for those souvenirs and travel videos. That’s a bad situation to be in, one that disappoints contributors and leads to a cumbersome refund process that you must personally organize.

Scenario 3: No Travel Perks + Disclaimer

Finally, you may run a fundraiser that contains no travel-related perks whatsoever. This means that no matter whether you succeed or fail, you can fulfill your perk promises because they are not contingent upon your trip. In this case, choose either Flexible or Fixed Funding.

If you don’t meet your goal with Flexible Funding, however, watch out for a pernicious psychological effect. If you don’t go on your trip, will you really feel like meeting your perk obligations? You’ll feel less motivated to do so and might flake out.

More Reasons to Consider Fixed Funding

Most people who use Indiegogo select the Flexible Funding model because they feel that some money is better than no money. As we discussed above, Flexible Funding is a fine choice for travelers who can already cover their basic costs or don’t offer any travel-related perks. But I’d like to make an additional pitch for the power of Fixed Funding.

To me, the startup mentality and the possibility of failure are what really make a crowdfunding campaign exciting. This excitement is only captured by Fixed Funding campaigns.

Imagine a small team of artists who want to collaborate on a big new project, but only if they can convince enough people to put money down on their good idea. Or a musician creating a new record. Or a solo engineer offering a brilliant new consumer product. When running a Fixed Funding campaign, each of these people is asking you to gamble with your money in order to cover their startup and production costs. But it’s not really a gamble for you, because if they don’t meet their goals and can’t produce their perks, you get your money back.

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For the contributors, Fixed Funding campaigns are more exciting and more safe. They make contributors feel like they’re making something big happen which would be impossible without them. And Fixed Funding campaigns encourage you, the organizer, to do your best job as a campaigner—because you’ll receive nothing if you don’t.

If you’re on the fence between choosing Fixed or Flexible Funding, go with Fixed.

Choosing Your Campaign Length

You can run an Indiegogo campaign for up to 120 days—so why not? The more time for people to donate to your campaign, the better, right?

Think again. The better duration for your campaign may be as short as a few weeks.

Writer, designer, and publisher Craig Mod ran a highly successful Kickstarter campaign for a book named Art Space Tokyo and then published an insight-packed article that analyzed almost every aspect of the campaign (http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/).

Craig originally planned to run his campaign for five weeks. But in hindsight, he realized that he could have done it in less time. Why? Because, as Craig describes, “People engage things: a) when they’re brand new, or b) when they’re nearing a deadline. We lose interest in that middle space.”

Go to Craig’s article and find the chart labeled “Kickstarter Daily Pledge Totals,” and you’ll see that dead middle space. For twelve days in the middle of his campaign, contributions slowed to a trickle.

Craig’s reasoning for this gap is that, in the beginning of the campaign, everything is new and exciting. It’s easy to get people on board at the start. Likewise, at the end, it’s dramatic and exciting. You’re almost there! Will you make it or not? People will visit your campaign near the end.

But that dead time in the middle? There’s no inherent excitement there. Unless you’re doing a great job of promoting yourself, you’re likely to see a big drop-off in the middle. (Data from Indiegogo confirms this: http://www.indiegogo.com/

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blog/2012/07/indiegogo-insight-winning-the-middle-game.html)

So why keep the middle? Just take it out. Do this and you’ll end up with something that everyone can appreciate: a brief, exciting campaign of one, two, or three weeks in length.

Choosing Your Fundraising Goal

A funny thing happens when you start accepting other people’s money: you start feeling like you need more of it. This phenomenon leads many campaigners to set fundraising goals higher than what’s actually required for their trip or project.

Ask yourself, Can I explain where every single penny of my fundraising goal will go, and feel good about it? If so, then you probably have a reputable fundraising goal.

If you have to decide between asking for a little bit less or a little more, ask for less. You can always exceed your fundraising goal. And setting a slightly lower goal makes it more likely that you’ll reach your goal and thus avoid the penalties involved with coming in short (either higher fees in the case of Flexible Funding or losing everything in the case of Fixed Funding).

Creating the Pitch

With your campaign perks, funding model, length, and goal established, there’s only one thing left to do: create the pitch. Indiegogo provides a template for you to follow, so you don’t need major design skills. The Indiegogo pitch template consists of a prominent photo or video located at the top of the page, followed by a space for text (and more images) below.

The Pitch Photo or Video

The first decision you face is whether to put a photo or video at the top of your pitch page.

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According to Indiegogo, campaigns with videos raise 114% more on average than projects with a photo (http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/2011/12/indiegogo-insight-pitch-videos-power-contributions.html). That statistic alone should convince you to create a video.

If you don’t consider yourself a competent videographer, welcome to the club. Don’t let that idea stop you from making the video.

The most basic pitch video involves you talking directly to your camera, explaining the basics of your campaign. I did this with my Better Than College book campaign (http://www.indiegogo.com/btc), and Sage did this with her travel campaign (http://www.indiegogo.com/sage-vs-the-world). Even if you don’t say anything more in the video than you already say in the text, the video dramatically increases the chance that someone will empathize with you.

One of my favorite amateur videos is Tessa Kauffman’s: http://www.indiegogo.com/epicmonentinbrazil. Tessa, a 16-year-old from Colorado, used this video along with a very compact text pitch to raise $4,800 to go to Brazil. Can you muster enough videography skill to do what Tessa did (or find someone else to do so)? My guess is yes.

For professional videography, check out Benjamin Von Wong’s video: http://www.indiegogo.com/vonwongdoeseurope. You probably don’t have access to the equipment and know-how required to produce a video of this quality. But if you do, go for it!

Sometimes you need to launch quickly, or you simply don’t want to invest the energy in making a video. I myself didn’t use videos for two of my three campaigns. In this case, choose a compelling photo to place at the top of your campaign page that clearly shows you or your destination. The more beautiful the photograph, the better. If you’re using a destination photo, try searching Flickr for Creative Commons-license photos for a great shot. (I recommend Compfight.com, a free website that lets you quickly search Flickr.)

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The Pitch Text

When you create a new Indiegogo campaign, the pitch template includes four categories of text:

Short Summary

What We Need & What You Get

The Impact

Other Ways You Can Help

Indiegogo provides suggestions under each of those categories that are worth following. To begin drafting your pitch text, simply follow the prompts.

Spend a few minutes browsing campaigns on Indiegogo, however, and you’ll see that many campaigners never get past this step. They simply respond to Indiegogo’s prompts as if they were filling out a test in school, and then they go live.

This is not effective pitch-writing.

As a potential contributor, I do want the facts. That’s what following the prompts will provide. But more importantly, I want to discover:

Does your goal strike me on an emotional level?

Will you use my money for a worthy purpose?

Are you offering a fair deal with your perks?

Can I trust you?

These elements differentiate a lukewarm campaign from a blazing hot one. They turn pitch-writing into an art, not a fill-in-the-blank form. And they’re completely unique to each campaign, making it difficult for this author to give concrete advice that will be useful to a broad audience.

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Instead of attempting to guide you through a crash course in copywriting, I advise you to carefully read the pitches of the fundraisers listed in “Campaign Case Studies” and then pick up one incredible book: Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

Made to Stick proposes that all captivating (“sticky”) messages include many or all of the following features. They’re:

simple

unexpected

concrete

credible

emotional

story (i.e., in a story format)

Spend some time with Heath & Heath’s book (or find a summary online), and you’ll dramatically improve your pitch-writing skills.Finally, remember to keep your pitch as brief as possible.

Many people will want to support your travel campaign. But very few people have the time or patience to sift through a ten-paragraph description of your trip’s itinerary. Epic-length campaign pitches drive away potential contributors by showing them that you don’t value their time.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, wrote: “perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” So it is for pitch-writing.

Pitch Checklist

Despite the blueprint that Indiegogo provides, many campaigners still miss a few important things.

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Here are the elements that you must absolutely, positively include in the text of your pitch:

images and/or descriptions of the perks that you’re offering

an explanation of your funding model and what happens if you don’t meet your goal

a clear explanation of where the money is going

photos and graphics—not just text!—including a photo of yourself and your destination

Polishing the Pitch

The best way to start writing a pitch is to compose a draft, walk away from it for a day, and then return to revise it. Repeat this as many times as needed until you feel you’ve produced the best possible pitch.

Next, give the pitch to the three smartest people you know who and are also likely to contribute to your campaign. Ask for their feedback. Revise accordingly. (You can use this process for the pitch video, too.)

Make sure that at least one of your reviewers is a spelling and grammar fanatic. Few things kill the professionalism of a fundraising campaign more quickly than a few stuppid typos.

Finally, combine the pitch text with the video or photo that you selected. Give it a final examination. Does this campaign feel compelling to you? Does it authentically represent your ambitions and character? Can you actually do what you’re promising to do?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re ready to launch.

Put in the time and effort required to craft a pitch that makes you proud. When you’re traversing the Pyrenees or teaching English in South Korea, you won’t regret it.

Campaign Case Studies6.

Campaign Case Studies 44

Below are case studies that demonstrate smart and not-so-smart travel campaign design. I’ve chosen campaigns that are primarily travel-focused and possess a healthy mixture of good, bad, and ugly components from which you can learn by example.

Open the website of each case study and do your own analysis prior to reading mine.

Project Doorway ($3500 raised of $3000 goal)

“Students from Lakehead University planning a dogsledding expedition to Svalbard, Norway!”

http://www.indiegogo.com/project-doorway

The Good: A very strong opening paragraph immediately demonstrates the team’s commitment, and the rest of the text pitch only reinforces it. These six students are obviously motivated and prepared.

The Bad: Boring, overpriced perks, especially under $100.

The Ugly: No images, headers, or stylized text in the pitch. Too much plain text makes my eyes hurt!

Drive, Eat, Blog ($5175 raised of $5000 goal)

“A cross-country culinary adventure.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/drive-eat-blog

The Good: A noble mission: road-tripping to meet chefs and sample regional foods before starting a bakery. Excellent perks at the $100+ level. (A dozen cookies or brownies? Yes, please!) Also, a nice supporting blog.

Campaign Case Studies

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The Bad: They followed the Indiegogo pitch outline as if it were a college exam.

The Ugly: $50 for a shout-out and a magnet? Come on. Send me some cookies.

The Ride to Rio ($8,790 raised of $10,000 goal)

“An epic 6 month, 12 country, 10,000 mile journey across two continents, powered purely by bicycles.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/theridetorio

The Good: Beautiful video and supporting website. Compact, well-written pitch. Sponsorship secured from a gear company. Creative perk at the $250 level (“Make Us Do Something!”).

The Bad: Insufficient explanation of where the money goes if their Flexible Funding campaign fails to meet its goal. Will the ride happen and the video get made?

The Ugly: Some perks offer nothing in return. They simply say, “Buy us a spare tire,” or “Buy our flights home.”

A Summer to Serve ($5,550 raised of $5,000 goal)

“Two brothers, 12 years apart, dedicating their summer to travel the country to be in the service of others. The Great American Road Trip meets the Peace Corps.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/asummertoserve

The Good: Compelling, authentic video. Well-styled, easy-to-read, image-rich pitch. Fixed Funding model.

The Bad: They waited to explain and emphasize their choice of Fixed Funding until the end of their pitch; that belongs up top.

The Ugly: It’s unclear as to what exactly they’ll do on the road trip and where the money is going.

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A Very Long Walk in Spain ($2,718 raised of $2,500 goal)

“Chris Gould is making a documentary about the 500 mile pilgrimage he’ll be making through Spain, known as the Camino de Santiago.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/WalkInSpain

The Good: Compact, straightforward pitch. Very reasonable perks. Simple, effective pitch video. Entertaining video updates.

The Bad: No explanation of the funding model. What happens to those perks if you can’t go to Spain, Chris?

The Ugly: You’re hiking the gorgeous Camino de Santiago, man—give us a few photos on the pitch page instead of just text!

The Eduventurist Project 2012 ($3,136 raised of $7,000 goal)

“A Learning Journey to explore new horizons and paradigms for educating changemakers!”

http://www.indiegogo.com/The-Eduventurist-Project-2012

The Good: Incredibly well-done video with personal testimonials.

The Bad: Too many blocks of text in the pitch. Follows the Indiegogo outline too closely. Give us brevity and images!

The Ugly: $250 is far too much for a thank-you card and mini-quote book.

Tall Tour 2012 ($1,001 raised of $1,600 goal)

“Help Bobby tall bike tour from Vancouver, Canada to Los Angeles, visiting bike co-ops and making connections between them along the way.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/talltour2012

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The Good: Fantastic video. Concise, compelling pitch. Very entertaining mission (“I will be touring all the way back to LA! ON A TALL BIKE!”).

The Bad: No perks between $25 and $200.

The Ugly: $200 for you to spell my name on the ground with rocks? Come on.

Teens to Thailand ($3,605 raised of $18,000 goal)

“How one teen can make a difference in the world.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/Teens-To-Thailand

The Good: Nothing. Nothing at all.

The Bad: The one paragraph of pitch text provides no information about who these teens are, where the money goes, or what happens if the campaign fails to meet its (completely unreasonable) goal. Blurry pitch photo.

The Ugly: The $100 perk: “A thank you email and imaginative appreciation halo (because you are an angle) [sic]”

Walk With Me ($1,225 raised of $10,000 goal)

“Experience the Appalachian Trail in full from the comfort of your own living room.”

http://www.indiegogo.com/Walk-with-me

The Good: The campaigner seems well intentioned.

The Bad: The $25 perk states, verbatim: “If you donate this, you will be interviewed at some point during the trip, depending on your location and availability. This interview will be scheduled by a local producer and is to cover the thoughts an idea’s of friends/family who encourage or discourage this event.”

The Ugly: A $1,000 postcard. Enough said.

Smart Campaign Promotion7.

Smart Campaign Promotion 49

Smart Campaign Promotion

Welcome to Your New Part-Time Job

When I signed the contract to publish my first book, College Without High School, I naïvely assumed that my publisher would take care of promotion. That’s what a book publisher is for, right?

To its credit, my publisher did get my book onto Amazon.com and into a few independent bookstores. I obtained a single radio interview and a single magazine review. But that’s where the promotion gravy train ended.

It took me about a year of lackluster sales to realize no one—not my publisher, Amazon.com, bookstores, or a few media appearances—would seriously publicize my book. Only I could do that.

The same truth applies to your crowdfunding campaign.

Indiegogo won’t promote your campaign. Random people won’t google it. Philanthropists are not trolling Indiegogo (and if they are, they’re probably donating to truly charitable causes).

There’s only one way to promote your campaign: you need to contact people who know and trust you, day after day, for the entire length of the campaign.

Between promotion and fulfilling your perk promises, you are signing yourself up for a lot of work. The more you treat your campaign like a job—with the commitment and energy you would give to running a business or working for someone else—the more likely you will be to succeed in reaching your campaign goal.

Ethical Campaign Promotion

Promoting a fundraising campaign means making people aware of its existence and then encouraging them to contribute.

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Promotion cannot be ignored. With excellent promotion, a hastily composed campaign can achieve its goal. And without promotion, even the most perfectly polished campaign will be dead in the water.

With these facts in mind, remember that there’s a big difference between smart, ethical promotion and stupid, unethical promotion.Follow these basic tactics to ethically promote your campaign:

Posting a link to your campaign and updates about its progress to your social media networks every few days. Highlight the hard work that you’re personally putting into the campaign and travel preparation.

Politely asking a few well-connected people to post a link to your campaign to their social networks, blogs, and/or newsletters. Only do this with people with whom you already have a personal connection. Send a short e-mail or private message (two paragraph maximum) when making your request.

Notifying specific networks of people (like online groups) who are related to your goal. For example, if you’re applying to an Unschool Adventures trip, I’ll gladly publicize your campaign on the Unschool Adventures Facebook page. It’s a relevant announcement that my group members won’t mind seeing.

Directly soliciting your closest friends, family, and associates. These people will be your first donors and your best cheerleaders throughout the campaign. They know, trust, and believe in you; don’t be afraid to ask for their help when the campaign is going slowly.

Telling people about your campaign with regular old face-to-face conversation. In our evermore digitized world, real-life connections still matter most.

The situation that you’re aiming to create with ethical promotion is one in which your friends, family, and communities

know that your campaign exists

receive a few reminders that your campaign exists, in case they missed it the first time

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aren’t annoyed by your reminders

feel inspired to contribute because of your hard work and ingenuity, not because they feel pressured

Unethical Campaign Promotion

Unethical promotion, on the other hand, creates a situation in which potential contributors feel annoyed, spammed, or pressured into donating. Tactics that lead to such feelings include:

Blasting your social media networks or online groups multiple times a day. Even once a day is too much for many people. The only time sending multiple announcements in one day may be appropriate is near the very end of your campaign.

Using language that makes you sound needy, ungrateful, or impatient. If you saw this on Facebook, would you feel inspired? “My campaign is going really slowly. Go donate right now!!”

Taxing a community beyond its means. If you (or someone else) has recently run a fundraiser that drew heavily from a specific community, such as a workplace, sports team, educational circle, or place of worship, don’t run another immediately on its heels. (This is especially relevant to campaigns that are on the charity end of the spectrum.)

The Power of Connections and the Halfway Mark

In 2012, a Wharton School professor, Ethan Mollick, analyzed the factors that make Kickstarter campaigns successful. While these findings aren’t 100% applicable to Indiegogo campaigns, they’re worth noting, especially if you’re doing a Kickstarter-style Fixed Funding campaign. Professor Mollick discovered two interesting trends relevant to campaign promotion.

First, the raw number of social media connections that you—the campaign founder—possess makes a big difference. As described by Jeanne Pi, who wrote

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an excellent summary of Mollick’s research (http://www.appsblogger.com/behind-kickstarter-crowdfunding-stats/):

For [a $10,000] project, holding everything else constant, if you had 10 Facebook friends, you would only have a 9% chance of succeeding. If you had 100 Facebook friends, your chance jumps to 20%. And if you have 1,000 Facebook friends? Your chance of succeeding is now 40%.

What does this mean for you? If you don’t have an extensive social media network of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, blog readers, etc., then it’s time to start building one. And if you don’t have time to build such a network, then plan on asking a few friends with large networks to do some serious promotion on your behalf.

Mollick’s second big insight was that failed campaigns tend to fail by large margins. Most significantly, 97% of failed campaigns don’t reach 50% of their goals.

This means that reaching 50% of your goal is a pretty significant achievement. If you can get your campaign past the halfway mark, you’re much, much more likely to reach 100%. Chalk this up to human psychology—we like to support winners—or perhaps some other reason. But no matter what you do, focus on pushing your campaign past 50% as early as possible.

Indiegogo’s data confirms that the simple act of launching your campaign and receiving immediate contributions is important for later success. According their blog, 85% of campaigns that reach their goal receive their first contribution within one day of going live (http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/2012/02/indiegogo-insight-85-of-campaigns-which-hit-their-target-recieve-their.html). Also:

...the probability [that] a campaign will reach its goal doubles once the first contribution is received, quadruples once it reaches 10% of its goal, and is more than five times as likely once 25% of the goal is raised. (http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/2011/10/insight-a-campaigns-first-contribution-can-double-your-success.html)

The above data suggests that you should launch a campaign only when you are 100% ready to start promoting it. Don’t launch a campaign and then “give it a few days” without any action on your part.

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To get your campaign moving quickly right from the beginning, ask a handful of your most enthusiastic supporters to promise to make a donation as soon as your campaign launches. This will take a bit of planning on your part, but it will pay for itself immediately by creating an invaluable feeling of momentum in your campaign.

Next, focus your ethical promotion tactics most heavily on the first few days. Remember what Craig Mod wrote about the beginning and end of a crowdfunding campaign? These are the exciting periods. They’re the times when your communities will be the most genuinely receptive to your updates and promotions. Let loose all your cannons and do your best to push the campaign past 25% or 50% in those first few days. Remember, you can always exceed your goal.

A Few Other Promotional Tools

Campaign Updates

To sustain a feeling of momentum throughout your campaign, use the Campaign Updates tool to send a direct message to your contributors. (The message also appears publicly on the “Updates” tab of your campaign.) According to Indiegogo, campaign owners who provide an update at least once every five days raise 218% as much money as campaign owners who update less often (http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/2011/10/indiegogo-insight-update-every-1-5-days.html).

What should you do with Campaign Updates? First, use them to solicit promotional assistance, especially when contributions have slowed to a trickle, such as in the middle of a campaign. Your current contributors have a vested interest in seeing your fundraiser succeed, especially with Fixed Funding campaigns. If you ask them politely to help spread the word, they just might do so.

Second, use Campaign Updates to share news regarding your travel and perk preparations. Have you been practicing your French? Throwing pottery for your perks? These types of activities demonstrate your continued commitment to the campaign. Showing is better than telling, so use photos, images, and videos whenever possible. Then add these same video updates to the top of your pitch for new contributors to see.

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Finally, show us your personal side by using Campaign Updates to comment on the fundraising process itself. Tell us how difficult you discovered promotion to be, or describe how you might run a campaign differently next time. Show us how you’re learning from this journey, and again, we might just feel inspired to help spread the word or even contribute a second time.

New Perks

After your campaign launches, you may still add new perks. Take advantage of this feature to invigorate a boring campaign or to add more inventory if your current perks are sold out.

Stretch Goals

Some campaigners create “stretch” goals, funding goals beyond the original goal at which new features are unlocked and added to perks. For example, you might say that if your $3,000 India campaign reaches $4,000, you’ll upgrade your “Introduction to India” video perk with a “Learn 15 basic Hindi words” extra feature.

Stretch goals are especially useful promotional tools for campaigns with low goals. Use Google to search the Indiegogo and Kickstarter websites for the word “stretch” to see examples.

After the Campaign

When your campaign ends—whether successful or not—a few promotional tasks remain:

Thank Your Contributors

Send personal thank-you e-mails whenever possible. If you have a very large number of contributors, send a single e-mail with contributors listed as BCC recipients. (Find contributors’ contact information via your campaign dashboard.)

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Send Your Perks

Do this as soon as possible. Notify your contributors via e-mail or a Campaign Update when they can expect their perks and again when you actually ship them.

Send Campaign Updates

Share photos and videos from the places you travel, links to travel blog posts, and anything else you think your contributors may enjoy.

By thanking your contributors, sending your perks promptly, and staying in touch after the campaign, you increase the chance that your friends, family, and communities will support more of your projects in the future.

The Real Payoff8.

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If you successfully meet your fundraising goal, then you’ll be on your way. Enjoy your trip and send gratitude to the people who helped make it possible.

If you don’t meet your goal, then perhaps your travels will need to wait a while. That’s okay. Send gratitude to those who helped anyway, and tell them that you’re not giving up.

Running an online crowdfunding campaign is hard work. There’s no free money in this world, and even the most well-planned campaign may meet failure due to circumstances outside your control. (Global recession, anyone?)

The one thing you always have control over is whether you learn from these fundraising challenges or not.

Copywriting, video production, online promotion, perk creation: these tasks may seem unique to crowdfunding, but they’re really just microcosms of bigger challenges you’ll run into over and over again in life. Defining a clear goal? Asking for help? Offering products or services of value to other people? Getting people to pay attention to you? Yea, you’ll do those things again.

Run a great campaign, enjoy your travels, and never forget that learning is the real payoff.

Drop me a line and tell me how your campaign goes: yourstruly@blakeboles.com.

The Real Payoff

Further Reading9.Browse these websites for additional advice on designing, launching, and maintaining your crowdfunding campaign:

IndieGoGo Crowdfunding Tips for Campaigners: http://www.indiegogo.com/crowdfunding-tips

Kickstarter School: http://www.kickstarter.com/help/school

Kickstartup: http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/

Kickstarter Tips from a Fan of Crowdfunding: http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2011/05/kickstarter-tips-from-a-fan-of-crowd-funding.html

The IndieGoGo Blog (specifically the Customer Happiness and Insights sections): http://www.indiegogo.com/blog/

Gratitude10.Thank you to the generous people who crowdfunded the publishing of this book:

Thank you Brenna McBroom, Jessica Barker, and Alex Kurucz for providing feedback on the blog post that became this book.

Vincent Perez (everlovinpress.com) designed the cover, Julie Pedtke (juliepedtke.com) designed the PDF, and Alex Cabal (bookspry.com) designed the ebook. You guys all rock.

Lori Mortimer—you’re an awesome editor. Two down, more to come!

Abby Li WardAimee FairmanAlex RiveraAlexandra OliverAlison from WABette-Lou RushBrady EndresBreana KaliCameron LovejoyCasey HoltChristine YablonskiChristopher CrossClabbe BjurstromDarcey WunkerDebbie EatonDebbie WongDenise Deeves

Elizabeth WalkupEllie BurtonEmma HersheyGail & Broc HigginsHannah Lily HallHans BruesehoffJaiela LondonJennifer ConstableJennifer ShearinJenny BowenJessica JonesJosh BeckKaren RoddyKaren TuckerKelli TraasethLaurie WolfrumMaggie Garrett

Majbritt LarsenMaria Hines-BrighamMatilde LausellMorgan RoddyPatrick CoylePaul BettsPaul KuruczPriscilla SansteadRob TullisRobert HarperRowan from TXSandra DoddTanner ShepherdTanya & Andrew DavisVirginia PhelpsandWendy Lapham

About the Author11.Blake Boles is the director of Unschool Adventures, the author of Better Than College and College Without High School, and the founder of Zero Tuition College.

Read Blake’s blog and learn more at blakeboles.com

If enjoyed this book, please consider writing a review on Amazon.com. Thank you!