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

Confessions of a Reformed Control Freak

Tarrant Figlio

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

"Coach Bieste." Photo via Fox

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.

Photo by Jay Ryness

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.

Dopp’s Guidelines for Managing Volunteers (Community Expression Blog Edition)

'High-Five' by Kevin, via Genderfork

As I built and grew a volunteer staff for Genderfork, a community expression blog, over a period of about six months, I worked out a set of informal guidelines for managing a staff.  Here are the pieces that were most critical for me.

1. Get to know them first, but not aggressively. I need a sense of a volunteer’s motivations, personality, relationship to the project, and social presence on the Internet before I will work with that person — but only on a very general level. If a person goes by a pseudonym, I don’t actually need a real name. I just need to know if and how the person behind that pseudonym earns respect online, and why they want to help.

2. Keep the critical task lists small. No one on my team has a required workload of more than two hours a week (most have less than that), even if someone asks for more. Volunteers can put in extra hours whenever they wish, and that’s up to them. I know life eventually gets busy, and I want everyone’s minimum commitment to be reasonable no matter what.

3. Let volunteers set their own schedules. Everyone should be able to batch-process a pile of work (do a bunch of it in advance) whenever it makes sense.  Whether a volunteer wants to work every day, once a week, or once a month should be flexible, and up to the individual.  (There are sometimes exceptions to this rule for us, but for the most part it’s possible.)

4. Make it concrete. All volunteers have concrete, realistic assignments paired with clear expectations.  They know when they’re done, and they have a way of assessing if the work they did was good.

5. Access granted on a need-to-break basis. Everyone gets enough access to do their jobs effectively, but not enough access to break the site.  (Tip: In WordPress, get a role/capability plugin for better control over account types.)

6. Interdependence works. I tie tasks to things other people care about — usually another volunteer’s job, or the public-facing content, or both. Volunteers need to know that when they don’t do their work, someone else will feel it.

7. No one owns the content pipelines. Volunteers get access to submissions and content in shared spaces.  I can check in and see how things are going at any time. If a volunteer stops working, we don’t lose any content.

8. Be extra clear about the few things that matter, and let go of the rest. I set a handful of clear guidelines based on what I feel is critical to the health of the project. I let the volunteers use their own editorial judgment, personality, and work style to get the job done within those guidelines. I don’t micromanage.

9. Expect them to be human. Volunteers are allowed to change. They’re allowed to flake before we even get started. They’re allowed to quit, to go quiet, to ask for help, and to need something different than I thought they needed, at any time.  It’s my job to support them, to be flexible with them, and to make sure their changing needs are unlikely to hurt the project.

10. Let them help each other. Our volunteers all have access to a private discussion list, and are encouraged to ask for the group’s input on content decisions when they want advice (instead of going to me for everything).

12. Praise loudly and often. Volunteers need recognition and appreciation — publicly, privately, in front of the rest of the staff, and from the community itself — in order to stay healthy and engaged.

13. Honor their insights, opinions, and ownership. Since they are in the most direct contact with our project, I also treat the volunteer staff as an advisory board for the direction of the site, and I get their input on any major changes or decisions before I make them.

In Other Words:

Volunteers are wonderful. Find the ones who really want to help. Give them clear, concrete ongoing tasks. Give them enough freedom to feel ownership, and enough guidelines to feel that their work is part of something bigger.  If something’s not working, it’s time to change something.

Remember to treat them like gold.

What if you Sold Headbands?: How to Keep Your Community Focused

Thanks to Flickr user m&m2009 for submitting
this photo for the Offbeat Bride Flickr pool.

There’s nothing more exciting than having an online community that’s growing to the point where your members are invested and excited about your brand. So excited, in fact, that they start sharing their ideas for what you could do next.

“What if you sold headbands?”

That was the gist of an email I recently received from a reader of my site, Offbeat Bride. “I make these headbands,” her email went on to say. “I’d like to partner with you to sell a custom line exclusively for your readers.”

To be fair, they were lovely headbands. My readers and community members would probably really like them … but I’m a web content producer. I am not a retailer. I had to stop and ask myself, “Do headbands help me achieve my mission of helping non-traditional brides plan their weddings?”

Suggestions from readers and community members can be a wonderful gift. It’s remarkable to have a hive mind of members giving you clear feedback about what they want from you and your community. That said, with larger communities (I’m at 15,000 registered members and 200,000 monthly readers) the sad truth is this:

You can’t be everything to everyone. It can feel like an admission of defeat, but instead view it as a rallying call to do what you do with impeccable laser focus. Be your one thing to a few people.

Print it out. Repeat it to yourself often: You can’t be everything to everyone. I hope that anyone even considering an online community knows this simple truth, but it’s one of those things that’s easy to say and hard to live by, especially when you’re in a community growth cycle.

My members have made it clear that they enjoy my online wedding community because I work hard to maintain it as a positive, constructive environment … an atmosphere that can be difficult to find in online communities. Because of this, some members wish the community’s tone could be applied to non-wedding topics — recent suggestions have included a sub-group dedicated to discussing medical and health conditions, and a sub-group about home decor.

These subjects would doubtless make for fascinating discussions, and I have no doubt that a few of my members could really benefit from them — just like a few would love headbands. But ultimately I’m in the wedding business, and my skills are aligned to that work.

If I broaden the focus of my community to include medical issues and interior decorating and headbands, the purpose of my community starts to get lost. Suddenly the on-topic discussions are buried in a sea of chatter about fibromyalgia and shag carpeting — both interesting subjects, but not related to my mission of supporting women in planning their non-traditional weddings.

When I get receive these requests and suggestions from members, I always take the time to acknowledge them. I thank them profusely for taking the time to share their idea with me, and then explain that, in order to keep the community functioning at its best, I’ve chosen to keep it (and me!) focused. I always make a point to acknowledge that this doubtless means I’m missing out on wonderful opportunities, and encourage them to pursue the idea on their own.

In one instance, an article on my site Offbeat Mama prompted a reader to ask me if I would start a community dedicated to nontraditional military families. I explained I didn’t have the resources or background to do so, but offered to link a Facebook group, if they decided to start one. (Which they did!)

Because, repeat after me: you can’t be everything to everyone. It can feel like an admission of defeat, but instead hold it up as a rallying cry. Stay focused on being one really great thing to a few dedicated people.

…Even if the headbands are pretty.

Corporate Culture, meet Free Culture. You guys can be friends.

A little over a month ago, Meitar “maymay” Moscovitz and I gave a collaborative talk about “free culture” online communities, and how corporations can find them and benefit from them without hurting them.

We presented this at Forum One Network’s “Online Community Unconference” in Mountain View, CA. The whole session (which is also available) was about 50 minutes.  Above is a 17-minute abridged version, boiled down to our main points:

• What (and “who”) is free culture?  (“We follow our passions.” “We find value in things other than money.”  “We’re the ones who edit Wikipedia.”  “We give our ideas away for free.” “We don’t let our jobs interfere with our work.” “We are the market makers. We’re creating the trends before they are capitalized on.” And so on.)
• When trying to promote to a community, go to the community itself, rather than to the community manager.
• When trying to sell to a community, don’t start with what your selling. Start with what you know about the community and why your product matters to them.
• Rather than poaching a free culture community manager, support that manager where they need it, and invite them to advise you.
• Rather than try to absorb or adopt a free culture community, set up your shop next door and be a good neighbor.
• You don’t need to be a long-time member of the community to engage with it. But you do need to be familiar enough with the community to engage with it respectfully, in accordance with its customs, values, and norms.
• The point is not that we’re free. The point is that we have a culture, and it’s our own.

(The sound is a little crackly — sorry; I blame the outdated version of iMovie I was using.  If it’s bugging you, go view the full talk instead.)

I’m intrigued by the relationship between corporate and free culture and want to dig up more examples. Open source software is the most obvious one. Threadless also seems like an interesting case study. Any other juicy ones come to mind?

Discussing Culture Conductor on Tummelvision

The same day we launched this site, I was also a guest on the weekly Internet webcast, Tummelvision.  Take a good look at these cuties, cuz I’m gonna be talking about them again around here:

That’s Deb Schultz, Kevin Marks, and Heather Gold — all tummlers who like to talk about tummeling.  But first, what’s a tummler?

tumm·ler // (tmlr)

n.

1. One, such as a social director or entertainer, who encourages guest or audience participation.

2. One who incites others to action.

In other words, the person who engages a group. (Kinda like a conductor, you might say…)

Here’s the full show for your listening pleasure:

Tummelvision 28 with guest Sarah Dopp

Tip: The first segment is about current events. If you want to skip to the part where we discuss Culture Conductor, jump ahead to the 39:15 mark.

Blogging w/ Volunteers: The Genderfork Jumpstart

Genderfork.com, a community expression blog about gender-nonconformity and androgyny, is one of my own projects. Here’s how it turned from a solo art blog into a community project. It was all about the volunteers.  – SD

Before Volunteers: The Solo Year

Genderfork started as a solo project, and I wrote one rule in stone for myself on Day One:

This will not require more than two hours a month of my time.

If I chose to spend more than two hours a month, that was fine, but the bare minimum amount of work needed to keep the site consistent and stable would have to fit into that time slot. I could commit to two hours a month. If the project needed more than that from me, it was too likely to die.

For a year, I blogged a photo a day, and I kept my time commitment promise to myself by doing the work in batches. I would dig through Flickr once a month, find 30 photos, blog them all as “draft” posts, and then schedule them to appear one a day, every day, at 10am.  It took about two hours a month to maintain, and it was beautiful.

But when people started gathering around the site in larger numbers and asking for ways to connect with each other, “two hours a month” began to sound idiotic.  I started adding new ways to contribute and increased my time commitment to two hours a week. (“But that’s it!”)

That plan lasted, oh, about three days before I realized I was screwed.  Not only were the new contributions turning into a disorganized pile, but blogging photos was becoming much more time-consuming — I had found all the easy photos, and now I had to dig deeper. In order to go any further down this path, it was clear that I needed to ask for help.

(Sidenote: I should add right now that Genderfork has always been a money-free [or money-super-minimal] project, and that this simplified any ethical question around “paid vs. volunteer staff” for me considerably. We’ll talk more about that potential can of worms sometime. It’s an issue that needs a lot of careful thought.)

Volunteers: Phase One

On a whim, I put up a blog post explaining that I wanted to do more with the site, but that my time was too limited to handle all the work. Would anybody like to help? Three people I had never met or heard of before (Adisson, Erica, and Jakk) emailed me right away to ask what they could do.

I divided the photo blogging work between them (“please blog 10-12 photos each per month”), and made the requirements very concrete, basing them on everything I had learned from doing the work myself.  This meant I had to write out everything from our editorial guidelines, to how to set up the Flickr-to-Genderfork account connection, to how to avoid accidentally offending photographers.  It was a lot of writing, but it was worth it.

Communicating all of that to them and helping them get their first photos blogged took about a week or two. But once they got into it, they handled the responsibilities easily. Blogging photos was officially off my plate.

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