The barriers to receive, acquit and connect with regular monthly donors have just been removed, with the sector’s leading crowd-funding platform providing a timely new digital fundraising innovation for the sector.
Launched this week, the ‘recurring donation’ option on the StartSomeGood platform will support thousands of organisations – irrespective of size and skill set – to provide monthly donation options to their communities, a fundraising option that is often unattainable for most small organisations.
StartSomeGood Co-Founder and CEO Tom Dawkins said the disruptions of 2020 has shown that social purpose organisations urgently need support to develop reliable and regular income, evidenced both by sector data and the 1100+ organisations who have used StartSomeGood platform to raise $15 million through crowd funding over the last 9 years.
“Many organisations are telling us they are in severe distress, which has been recently validated in the RESET 2020 research, where nearly half the non-profits surveyed have operating reserves of six months or less,” Tom said. “Nearly 40% of organisations reported that not being able to run fundraising events has created the biggest negative impact of COVID-19 for them.
Community organisations, social enterprises and charities don’t need one-off fundraisers or one-off donations right now, says Tom. They need reliable, ongoing income and an experienced digital partner to power this effectively for them.”
The new service – called Recurring Crowdfunding – allows organisations to build dedicated supporter groups, who sign on to give on a recurring schedule. This can be used by non-profits to attract ongoing philanthropic support, by social enterprises to offer subscription products or community organisations to manage their membership or build a giving circle.
Organisations harnessing the new function include IndigiSpace, an accelerator for Indigenous start-ups. Founder Greg Hogkinson says: “This will help us to provide more opportunities for Indigenous businesses, and we see this as a way to get the community involved in the development of those businesses.”
Another organisation Catalysr – an education provider and platform for migrant entrepreneurs regards the new service as a “game changer”. Founder and CEO Usman Iftikhar says: “We have always wanted to give our community the opportunity to offer on-going financial support, but never had the capacity or resources to develop a digital fundraising arm. Recurring Crowdfunding by StartSomeGood is a game changer for us and many grass roots social enterprises like us to help us develop a deeper relationship with our supporters and diversify our funding sources, especially in the post-COVID economy.”
“While we will continue to support changemakers innovate and launch new responses, we knew we could adapt our technology to provide the support that organisations need now, which is to protect and progress their years of hard work and efforts,” said Tom.