Setting your target

• What’s my funding target?

• How many people do I need to give?

• How many people do I need to ask to give?

• How often should I ask them?

• How long should my campaign be?

• When should I run my campaign?

Luckily, we can help you answer these questions. 

Do the math

So, you know how much money you need for your art project. You will need to account for the Boosted fee. Remember, you receive 90% of the total funds raised. 
 

[$TOTAL YOU NEED] / 0.9 = Your [$Boosted target]

Your Boosted Target should fall somewhere between what you would Ideally like to come out with from crowdfunding and the minimum amount needed for the project to go ahead.

What determines this can be a whole range of factors, but its good to first consider how many people you will have to reach.

If we take the average gift on Boosted as $50, then we can take your fundraising target and divide it by 50. This will tell you the approximate number of donors you need.

How many people do you need to ask to get that many gifts?

Research on successful Kickstarter projects indicates that between 1.5% and 5% of the people who know about your crowdfunding project will give you money. Anecdotally, Boosted conversion rates are higher, because the artists that use Boosted are promoting their project to people who know and like their work. But we don’t have the stats to back this up, so we’re going to play it cool and not over-promise.

2.3% is the average website landing page conversion rate across all industries, so we’re going with that to help us work out how many people you need to ask to give.

Take the number of donors you need and divide that by 0.023. This gives you the number of people you need to contact to make your fundraising target. 

How many times do you need to ask?

Those of you who do a lot of marketing may be familiar with the old adage that you have to ask seven times to make a sale. 

Crowdfunding’s no different. Even if people know you and like you, they still have busy lives, and you’ve got to cut through that noise. Plan to ask people to give five-seven times.

So, to sum up, not only are you going to be contacting thousands of people. You’re also going to contact them multiple times during your campaign. So you’re going to have to keep things fresh by contacting them in different ways.

Ways to engage people to give to your campaign:

• Phone calls.
• Personal emails.
• Face to face meetings.
• Mass emailing.
• Social media.
• Asking others to spread the word to their community
• Joint promotions/partnerships.
• Media and PR.
• Boosted project updates.
• Shout outs through Boosted and Arts Foundation channels.
• Posters, stickering and guerrilla street art (always ask permission).
• Events that you host.
• Activations at other events (markets, shows, conferences etc.).

Check out our article on planning your content to find out more about all the ways you can inspire people to fund your art.

How long should you campaign for?

We suggest running the campaign over 4 weeks, however ultimately the dates are up to you.

A longer campaign doesn’t necessarily mean more opportunity for fundraising. Boosted campaigns generally raise up to 70% of funds in the first 4 days and last 4 days of the campaign. Giving yourself additional time might only increase the gap between those weeks and slow your momentum.

Now here are a couple of important funding milestones that influence your campaign.

Hit these and you’ll be well on your way to success.

• Aim to raise 10% of your target on day one.
• Aim to raise 33% of your target by the end of the first week. 

When should you campaign?

Avoid summer because everyone is at the beach and broke from Christmas. The rest of the year is much less seasonal, and generally February through November are all good months for fundraising. People tend to be most active on social media between 7:00 PM–9:00 PM Tuesday–Thursday, so if you are launching your campaign, its good to keep that in mind!