Kickstarter Fundraising: Myths, Facts, and Alternatives

Kickstarter.com — a social fundraising tool for creative projects — now has a reputation among social media enthusiasts as THE Magical Way to Raise Money. People have told me it works better than other methods, and it attracts more attention (probably true). I’ve also been told that anyone can use it for anything (not true), and that you can keep all the money you raise even if you don’t reach your goal (nope!). One person even informed me that Kickstarter personally MATCHES and DOUBLES financial contributions (definitely, definitely not true). There is a growing mythology about this tool.

Five facts about Kickstarter

Let’s set a few things straight:

1. It’s smart, attractive, clean, awesome, and the first of its kind [see comment discussion below]. Yes indeed it is.
2. It ONLY allows funding for creative projects. No business funding.
3. You ONLY receive funds if your project reaches its funding goal.  (This a core feature of their service, and an alarming number of “Kickstarter is awesome!” chorus members don’t seem to know this.)
4. Because of their growing popularity, you now have to submit your projects to Kickstarter for review, and wait to be approved or denied before you can start your campaign.
5. At the end of a successful campaign, Kickstarter will take 5% of the total amount you made, and Amazon payments (their payment system) will take an additional 3-5%.  That means that if you raise $5,000, you will pay $400 – $500 in fees.

Consider the Innovations

Most of Kickstarter’s magic mojo is simply that they made a game out of raising money.  Here are the rules to that game:

• Set a deadline. Let people know there is a limited time to this campaign.
• Set a minimum funding goal. “If we don’t reach this number, the project won’t have enough funding to happen.” Figure out what that number is.
• Enforce the deadline and the funding goal. The campaign STOPS at the deadline, and if you didn’t meet the goal, the project DOESN’T happen. (This is where Kickstarter is most valuable: they play bad cop about the rules of the game, while you get to play good cop and try to get people excited.)
• Set up tiered levels of giving, and promise people different thank-you gifts for each level.
• Let the fundraisers keep full ownership of their projects. (It’s not investment; it’s sponsorship. It’s pre-selling. It’s generosity.)

Kids, you can totally try this from home. You don’t actually need to be on Kickstarter’s lawn to play this game. (It just helps. Sometimes. That’s all.)

It’s not the only way.

Personally, I am all for Kickstarter.  I think they’re a good, sexy, internet-loving company that’s doing amazing things for people, and doing them well.  But I also find it disturbing that people are so excited about them that they spread false rumors about their particular form of magic. And I think it’s important that everyone know: there are other ways.

IndieGoGo, for instance, is a blatant Kickstarter clone [see comment discussion below] has three major differences:

1. There is no approval process or waiting period to get started.
2. You can list any kind of project — creative, business, whatever.
3. You get to keep all of the money, even if you don’t reach the goal.

(Note: This doesn’t necessarily make them better. If anything, it removes a lot of the game and heat that makes Kickstarter projects so exciting. But it does make them a solid alternate option — especially if Kickstarter’s rules aren’t working for you.)

Another option is to use a PayPal-based fundraising tracker, like ChipIn or Fundrazr.

I went DIY.

In December, I launched a crowdfunding campaign without Kickstarter. I used the giving widget offered by PayPal Labs to track donations (mostly because I thought it was prettier than ChipIn). I also used a Tumblr site to manage the campaign, and Google Checkout to catch a bunch of contributors who hated PayPal (guess what? There are many).

I set a goal of $5,000 in 30 days and laid out some perks for contributors based on donation amount. At the end of the time period, I had raised about $8500 from nearly 300 people. I had more control over the campaign and I paid lower fees on the money I raised (about 4% instead of 9%) than I would have if I had used Kickstarter.

And I will tell you all about how I organized that fundraiser and why my community made it successful in another post.

[photo credit: "Tip Jar" by Dave Dugdale]

Things Learned in 15 Years of Tending Community

I am honored and thrilled to introduce you to Tarrant Figlio, a long-time community manager equipped with a huge arsenal of wisdom and experience. Tarrant has also been serving as a key contributor at our very own Culture Conductor, editing many posts and managing a big chunk of the publishing process around here. I asked her to speak to some of the things that matter most in her community work, and her answers were juicy, juicy, juicy. Ready to dive in? Read on…
~Sarah Dopp

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Confessions of a Reformed Control Freak

In the beginning, I thought managing community meant controlling the conversation. I had a hard line and while defensible, it had its ridiculous moments. (“NO! Don’t talk baby names here on the trimester board! We have a board for that!”)

I learned along the way:

• Lead with light reins.
• Encourage members.
• Listen, listen, listen.
• Teach members how to be a part of the community.
• Teach members to take ownership of the community. The most valuable asset in online communities are the members who lead conversations, take new members under their wing, point to site content, and invest themselves in building the community.
• Lead by example.

I take a laid-back approach to community policing. Yes, I enforce guidelines; however, I refuse to pull posts that might lead to a violation.

Community management boils down to how to help your community grow. Communities grow when you treat members as adults, not errant children.

When looking for a new place to live, you don’t want to move into that neighborhood with a cop on every corner and cameras watching everything. The same thing happens online. Even the rule abiding don’t flourish in a community when “big brother” seems to slam a mighty fist at the slightest hint of infraction.

I think many managers either think that their job starts and ends with reading and deleting posts, or starts and ends with the paperwork side of things. It doesn’t; those things indeed have their place (or in the case of paperwork and meetings, their inevitability). In managing a community, though, consider yourself the host of the party, the professional party organizer — not a ranch hand herding sheep.

“But what about trolls?”  I hear you ask.

My advice for “trolls” starts and ends with “Don’t feed the Trolls.” No, wait it doesn’t.

My advice: stop actively seeking out and suspecting trolls. Welcome an alternative point of view. Ask questions about it. Ask how the member came to that conclusion. If a member comes with a point of view eerily similar to another person’s point of view, don’t make your first stop crosschecking IP addresses and registration information.

In the past decade, I have come across very few true trolls. That wasn’t true when I first started working in online community. I know trolls still exist and plague some communities and that’s where “Don’t feed the trolls” comes in. If you don’t lose your cool and you have taught your community the proper response to true “troll” behavior, the trolls find reward elsewhere.

I talk a lot in my communities. I ask questions. I answer questions. I connect members with other members who can answer their questions or empathize with them.

I know the moods of my communities, the players and which way the wind blows. By participating in those conversations, I can steer a conversation before it turns bad in many instances. If I pull more than an isolated post, I post to the board reminding all the members how and why they should stop before they flame or continue to flame.

I do it in a way that isn’t casual and doesn’t call out the members in public. It also isn’t “A NOTE FROM ABOVE” where the members haven’t ever seen the mightiness that holds the power to pull a post. They know me. I remind them of the rules. I make it clear that while I know why they reacted like they did and I empathize, I want them to find a different way to react and stay in the bounds of a healthy discussion.

In order to manage a community, you need to know the community. Listen to them, talk with them, be a part of the community. Even on big sites with a community handling every topic under the sun, you can connect on some level with the smaller parts of that community. If you can’t, then you miss serving your community well.

Passing Notes, Playing Dead, Saying Thanks

Last week, like every week, I watched Glee on Hulu, but this episode was different. In this episode, the tough character of Coach Bieste moved from a stone-faced background role to a heart-achingly vulnerable main spotlight, and her performance got me. I was stunned by it. I spent the next two hours researching the actor, Dot Jones, and her fascinating and varied career. (15-time world arm wrestling champion? For reals?) I dug through everything about her that appeared on YouTube. I didn’t stop until 1 AM when I found her on Facebook, hesitantly clicked the “Add as Friend” button, and included a personal note to express exactly how much her performance moved me, and why, and THANK YOU.

At 2 AM, I received an email: “Dot Jones confirmed you as a friend on Facebook.”

I was elated to get that little gesture of attention and acceptance, but even more pleased to know that she probably — like, really, in all likelihood — actually read my letter. And appreciated it.

The next day, I went to the beach with my friend, Will, and recapped the story. He told me of a similar experience recently. A song at the end an album had moved him in a shocking and probably life-changing way, and he sought out the artist (on Facebook, too!) to tell him so, and why, and THANK YOU.  He still hasn’t heard back, but that wasn’t the point. Will knows what I know because we’ve both gotten them: those letters matter.

Back in September, I assisted Will in coordinating the Gender Spectrum Kids Camp. Together (and with the help of a bunch of other volunteers), we organized a fun, supportive weekend for kids ages 4-11 while their parents attended a conference downstairs.  I knew Will had been too tied up with registration and scheduling to ever really play with the kids, so that night at the beach, I asked him what the most satisfying part of that experience had been for him.

He thought for a moment and said it was when a kid played dead on the floor at the end of the day.  One child had had so much fun — and was so unwilling to leave — that she went as completely limp for as long as she could stand it to stop her parents from taking her home.  That moment of 8-year-old melodrama put everything into perspective for Will, and he knew he’d made an impact.

Later that night, I lamented that we don’t get the same kind of feedback from Internet community organizing. Everything is photos and text. There are no hugs. There are no facial expressions. There is no kid on the floor. And then Will reminded me of the letters.

“I just wanted to say that I love this site. I check it every single day. It brightens my mood and gives me the support, advice, and empathy that I can’t get in the world I live in.”

I get letters like that, and comments, and little notes — sometimes directed at me and sometimes directed at my projects — every single day. And you know what? Sometimes I’m so distracted with the details that I flat-out forget they are there. But as soon as I remember to listen, those letters become my kid on the floor.  They tell me I’m on the right track.  They are the loudest, most sincere, most compelling feedback my teams and I can possibly get to keep building and organizing and putting ourselves out there.

Whoever you are reading this, whatever your role is in your communities, I have two pleas for you:

1) Listen for the letters where you might not be hearing them, and look for your kid on the floor. Somewhere, in some form, you’re probably getting positive feedback about the impact you have on the world. Focus on it, absorb it, and let it fill you up. Let it guide you.

2) Go write those letters. Go be the kid on the floor for the person who is changing your world.  Go. Do it. Now. Play dead if you have to. Just make sure they know what you mean.

That feedback makes a difference. THANK YOU.

When is it okay to publish other people’s content?

A college student who is developing a new community resource site just emailed me with the following question:

“What are the logistics of taking info from other websites (and of course “citing” the source?)  A lot of good [relevant materials] are in pdf format on other websites. But, who really wants to click a link on my website to go to another website to click another link to be directed to the pdf, when i could cite the source and make it available on my website?  (a one-stop-shop sort of thing…)  What are the special permissions involved in appropriating some of these materials?”

I wrote back…

Here’s my rule of thumb:

- If it’s obvious that they’re fine with having it reused (e.g., they outright say “please reuse this,” or they have a Creative Commons copyright statement that says it’s fine to reuse it as long as you attribute it and don’t profit off of it), then you can use it.

- If it’s not obvious, but you think they might want you to use it, it’s wise to contact them directly and ask for their permission to post it. Most people will be honored and flattered, and might even link to your site if they like what you’re doing. And in the worst case scenario, they say no, and you just saved yourself from a public kerfuffle (people do get cranky about their content being reused without permission… depends on the person or org).

(In either case, if you do reuse the content, be sure to provide a link back to the original. This lets visitors verify the accuracy of your reposting, and also lets them visit the source site for related content.)

- If it’s not obvious that you have permission to use it, and contacting them isn’t working out, your safe option is to link to just the page it appears on at their site. Visitors will totally understand.

These guidelines have served me well and kept me out of trouble.  Anyone else follow a different set of rules?

What’s up with the new Facebook groups?

A few weeks ago, Facebook launched a new set of features for Facebook Groups.  In fact, it’s kind of a whole new “thing.”

Opt-Out is the new “I Love You”

Facebook groups have some interesting features. They have group chat! And the ability to share docs! (Nicely done, Facebook!)

They also bring two radically culture-changing features to the table:

1. The person who creates the group (along with any member of the group) can add as many of their friends as they want to it.
   • That’s add, not invite. Your friend thinks you should be in their group? Boom. You’re in a group.
   • Don’t want to be in the group? You need to go into the page and click a button to leave it.  Because otherwise…
2. You will receive email notifications for every single post, doc, and comment that appears on the group.
   • …until you turn them off.

If you’re the kind of Facebook user who regularly receives app invites, event invites, and fan page invites that you don’t actually care about, this is highly concerning.  It means that your broad Rolodex-style social network now has extra super-powers for adding noise to your inbox. Any well-intentioned, loving, talkative, self-promoting friend can now spam your butt off until you stop them.

I guess, in that sense, it’s a step up from email. On Facebook, you can actually stop them.

Old Groups Aren’t New Groups

What about the old groups? Here’s the official word from Facebook’s FAQ:

• If you had a Group before these features were launched, your Group remains unchanged. No new features, but it’s still there.
• All new Groups will have the new features.
• There is no way to change your old Group into a new Group.  (Sucker.)

Maybe they acknowledged that the new Group features are so radically different from what was there before that implementing them in the existing Groups would be a violation of trust, and throw a lot of communities way out of whack.

Or maybe they wanted to create an old-schoolers vs. new-schoolers dynamic among Groups, providing badass street cred to any group that existed before October 6, 2010, and making sure those darned newfangled groups are extra shiny for contrast.

Maybe they’re just lazy.

How to Win at Facebook Groups

The new Group features are ideal if your group meets the following criteria:

• Everyone wants to be there.
• Everyone wants to hear from everyone else in the group.
• No one will try to bring in a member who doesn’t belong.

In other words, Facebook Groups is a great platform for a small, closed group with a contained scope.  Everyone feels included; discussion and sharing is easy.

How to Create a Group

Want one? Here’s how:

1. Go to facebook.com/groups
2. Click “Create Group”
3. Choose your group name, your initial members, and whether it’s Open (anyone can see stuff and join), Closed (people who can see who the members are, but they can’t see the content), or Secret (If I told you more, I’d have to kill you).
4. That’s it. Now go forth and nurture your brand new Facebook community.
   

“Our Internet,” a new Community Links Feed

We’ve been drumming up lots of community advice and insights here at Culture Conductor, but we also know we’re not the only ones obsessed with this subject. Then again, unless you know where to look, you can miss all the juicy, distributed conversation that’s happening everywhere else.

We want to make the “finding it” part easier, so we’ve started a community links feed. We call it, “Our Internet,” and it’s an attempt to aggregate all the useful news, advice, and stories an online community builder wants to see.

You can benefit from this New Thing in two ways:

1) Keep an eye on the links feed to find out what people are recommending. It’s over here, and you can also subscribe to the RSS feed.

2) Suggest sites for the feed to share and highlight material you find useful. All you need is a delicious.com account — just bookmark a page you want to recommend, add a description explaining why it’s useful, and tag it “CultureConductor“. It will show up in our publishing queue, and if we agree it’s a good fit, we’ll post it and give you credit.

Kind of neat, huh? We borrowed the idea from Kink On Tap, a weekly webcast about politics and sexuality, which also maintains a community links feed, though they have a slightly different setup.

For those who are interested in how we built our particular setup (and we encourage you to keep borrowing and improving the idea), here’s how we handled the techie bits:

Read the rest of this entry »

FIRST POST! How the First Comment Sets the Tone for the Entire Conversation

Back in the early days of blogging, readers of especially popular blogs started competing with each other to see who could be the first to comment on a post.

“FIRST POST!” would come the digital shout, the equivalent of a big of blog commenting graffiti, sort of like a tagger plastering his name on a wall. Nothing actually was said. It doesn’t relate to the post at all. The poster has just established that they were here first.

Folks typing FIRST POST miss a huge opportunity, because as the first commenter they have a lot of power. It’s important to understand how the first comment on a post has the ability to define the mood of the entire conversation. It’s the first comments that I tend to watch most closely in my moderation process.

Here’s one example: A couple months ago, we wrote a sponsored post on Offbeat Mama about an online baby registry tool that allows parents to register for cash they can use for services and experiential gifts. The very first comment was from someone who simply wanted to say that they hated the idea of registries. They had no opinion about this specific registry tool, but were against the whole concept of registering for gifts anywhere.

Every commenter after that first comment felt the need to weigh in on how THEY felt about baby registries. Were they ok for the first child? What about the fourth? Was a cash registry any less tacky than any other registry? Because the first comment was A) negative and B) focused on a meta-issue, the discussion was completely derailed from the specifics of the product we were talking about … of into a sneaky spiral of snarking over big picture issues.

The very first comment was not in accordance with our commenting policy, but since we didn’t catch it in time, the entire thread of comments slid off track. (both my editor and I were busy for a few hours that afternoon — that’ll teach us to EVER leave our laptops! Heh.) The first commenter effectively said, “I don’t really care about this specific post, but I’d like to use this comment section to debate a larger issue.”

When you’re publishing a post on a topic you know is going to be controversial, you can actually step in and make the first comment yourself. On Offbeat Bride, we recently ran a guest post criticizing the state of many wedding photographer’s websites. The post was constructive, but I anticipated and negative pile-on in the comments, and so immediately after the post went live, I left the first comment myself:

Offbeat Brides, you know we’re not about bashing anyone here. So please keep your comments constructive. Photographers are our friends, and we want to help them make their websites better — not bitch about them.

In this way, I made it clear in the context of the comments exactly what kind of discussion we WEREN’T looking for. (Of course, after 100+ comments, the discussion eventually went there anyway … but at least we got in 100 comments before the inevitable snarking began!)

As I’ve mentioned in past posts, comments on my sites are moderated aggressively — they’re high traffic sites, and the positive tone of posts and comments is part of my branding. This is all to say, not every blog will need to watch their FIRST POST! comments quite as closely as we do on Offbeat Bride and Offbeat Mama … but especially if you’re posting about something controversial, watching that first comment carefully is a worthy use of your time.

Group Voting by Email List: Now with more nuance!

About a year ago, I needed to ask the volunteer staff at Genderfork to start making group decisions about certain issues.  Our staff had been growing, some members were becoming more talkative than others were, and I wanted to make sure everyone had an equal say in final decisions. We needed a way of voting.

I wasn’t excited about the voting method I’d seen on tech community mailing lists in the past (“+1″ means yes, “-1″ means no). It seemed a bit too flat — missing all of the enthusiasm or hesitation you’d be able to gauge if your group were all in a room together. But, I hadn’t heard of any other options.

“0 – 5″: More than just yes and no

Stuck, I ran the issue by my friend Melissa, who had just started a new job at a nonprofit organization. She told me about a method they used in meetings to “take the temperature of the room” before a final vote: asking everyone at the table to hold up a number of fingers, 0 – 5. Here’s what it means:

Holding up four or five fingers is a green light. It indicates you approve of the idea, and you don’t have any major concerns. (Five fingers shows a bit more excitement than four.)

Holding up one, two, or three fingers is a yellow light. It means you have reservations about the plan, but you won’t try to stop it from happening. Everyone who holds up fewer than 4 fingers is asked what changes they’d like to see made to them plan, in order to take their vote to a 4 or a 5.

Holding up no fingers (a fist) is a red light. It’s a signal that you want to block the plan. In the case of Melissa’s organization, if two people hold up a fist, the plan is vetoed and will not happen.

For a not-too-large group, this method creates a nice hybrid of two kinds of decision-making: consensus and majority rules.  It’s not really majority rules because the plan can be blocked by a minority. It’s not really consensus because not everyone has to agree. It is efficient (like majority rules) and it considers the needs of each individual (like consensus), and it seems to get things done.

Shifting the Method from Meatspace to Mailing List

I carried it over to the Genderfork mailing list and explained the method.  Instead of fingers, volunteers can just send in emails, each with a number, 0 – 5. If they put down anything less than 4, they need to explain what would make the plan better for them.

An unexpected result was that it provided the less-talkative members an easy way to share their input without needing to engage in the full conversation.  If they approve of the idea, all they need to send out is an email saying “4″ or “5″.  One character, “send”, and they’re done.

The other nice result is having a sense of how much enthusiasm there is for an approved plan.  An all-fives group is offering a different level of support than an all-fours group, and that’s useful information to have.

Since our group is mostly in alignment with each other most of the time, votes for less than 4 are rare, but they do happen — usually because a proposed idea seems underdeveloped.  These are usually requests for us to work out more details and then come back for a new vote.

The result of using this method, for us, is that it allows us to our gauge level of agreement while still getting things done.  It works.

Have you also put this method to use? Do you have other voting methods that allow people to express degrees of enthusiasm? Tell us below!