Crowdfunding campaign

#1

Here is a collection of what ppl said re: crownfunding campaign in a related thread:

…run a public funding campaign in a platform such as Mimoona (see example project: https://www.mimoona.co.il/Projects/4909 .
Objective can be modest, e.g. “keep TAMI going for next 12 months”
Disadvantage is the commission these sites take (e.g. 9-12% for Mimoona )
One advantage is that a good idea of the funding raised can be obtained quite early, before the cut-off date of the campaign itself and before 28th of Feb.
Another adv perhaps is that the campaign plea in this format may be considered more appealing and can be sent to organizations mentioned in prev. posts and e.g. all Facebook members, etc (@jonathan)

I also support the crowdfunding campaign idea. People are familiar with crowdfunding, it has become a rather natural platform for people to donate to their causes. I think the ‘mental barrier’ for a person to react to a facebook post such as the above, figuring out how and where to donate, is higher compared to clicking a ‘donate’ button on a well-explained crowdfunding campaign. a crowdfunding site creates a feeling of a community mobilizing in action to a common cause, whereas a link to a page with a bank account or paypal address feels, I don’t know, “blind” or “disconnected”. sorry this is a rather fuzzy explanation, bottom line is that I feel crowdfunding feels more natural and familiar to people so it will be more effective (@guyovadia1)

We’ve ran 2 campaigns for Open Knesset and one even made its target. The friend who ran it became a pro in the field and even wrote a book about it. IMO a crown funding campaign is a good way to collect all the money-making ideas we have as offering - T shirt, work session, workshops, yearly membership etc. and give TAMI fans a menu of how they can help.

The challenge is that we have to continuously market the campaign. The crowdfunding site won’t bring us any ppl and if we don’t make a lot of noise about it, we’ll get no money.

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2019 - tami shutdown/hibernate/recalculate
#2

Is this an ongoing campaign or one time?
Because t-shirts are a one time thing.

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#3

Since the campaign will be run on facebook mostly, now will be a good time to invite everyone u know to like TAMI page.

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#4

We have both a facebook page, and a facebook group.
Facebook uses pages as a milking cow for promotion money, and I will not be surprised at all if they intentionally suppress posts from reaching people in order that we pay promotion money.

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#5

Yet we have nothing to lose. We’ll post a link to the campaign there anyway.

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#6

Thanks @daonb
As mentioned in the other thread, I contacted a videographer (Ran) that recently did the video for a very successful crowdfunding campaign for a friend.
Whether we go for it or not I’d like to share what I got from this engagement which may be useful w.r.t

I was going for obtaining an exact price offer and estimation of time to produce it using texts from the TAMI Media as basis for a video script, instead got “insights”.

There’s no specific cost number because the video production depends on what we want from the video, which in turn depends on the message we say/sell to people that we want.

TLDR: a price range of 10-15kNIS , for 2-3 days video shooting was given to me before I spoke to him. I didn’t verify this with him given the nature of engagement – strategies though discuss later on.

  1. TAMI has/ had at the very least some public image defect.
    His initial response caught me by surprise and my attention:
    “ Why should the public fund a closed members group? very similar to something Ronen wrote earlier in a thread as to why the volunteering status wasn’t approved, as TAMI was interpreted as a cliquey club @rshouker
    " מזכיר: מטרות העמותה התפרשו כך שהמקום הוא מועדון חברים סגור."
    A repeated in-your-face contrast to how I perceive TAMI to behave and how it tries to portray itself.

Specifically, he referred to one of the media files I forwarded him from the media files on Tami website, including an older article that proudly rejects taking any money from companies desperate to offer theirs.
[ Since this part doesn’t seem true – I suggest removing or modifying the entry at least with some context. Context in retrospect, as I see it
A. Mitigating commercial influence during early hackspace formation, onset and stabilization was probably much more important.
B. Eliminating commercial influence considering the then recent social justice revolts against monopolies and corruption.
(and if we want we could even lever this for message of social justice as one of the goals and a cause worth joining) ] .

2.What do we want from the campaign, why do we want or rather deserve the public’s money?
After explaining the true picture / my image of TAMI, pointing out spirit of place, and as matter-of- fact extreme openness with tools for the public and tech community even for those who don’t have resources to pay – he briefly brainstormed some examples for possible pitching messages to aim for :
A. Practical message - come and use our tools / space etc, you gain far more value than you spend.
B. emotional– come and be part of a community that offers equal opportunities for using its facilities, is involved with social good-doing (and now you do your small part to help sustain it financially).

So now what do we do with this info?(??? ) some decision directions/questions:

  1. What’s the campaign (short term = long term )
  2. Do we pitch it to potential members only (e.g. to 6000 facebook groups, or also to commercial enterprises
  3. Do we go Public campaign on a platform, for money alone / for marketing membership / marketing workshops / other
  4. Do we spend time in trying to optimize such an effort with additional levering / focusing resources (e.g. PR video, animation, t-shirts whatever) or just throw whatever works with minimum effort

given my recent awe at public image being a more complicated matter than earlier anticipated – IMO there may be something to lose by doing it this way #theMoneyShowerIncident.

  1. If we do want to input resources – how to sponsor the monetary part: seed donation / seed loan / other
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#7

To make it interesting it has to be time limited. the TShirts are something we give to those who donate ~80 NIS.

Than we’ll surely fail. Many of our potential members are not on Facebook and unless we pay for promotion, we’ll get no exposure for Facebook. While the project is live we have to be promote it in multiple channels and be creative about it as we don’t have money to pay for ads.

The way I see it, our sponsors get stuff from TAMI: a shirt, a workshop, a single work session or a yearly membership. No one will donate money so we can play with our tools while keep paying low membership fees. Why should they?

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#8

I just asked you to invite everyone to like the page so more people will get to know tami. That’s all.
(Maybe it’s also time to edit the page description to something better?)

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#9

Following earlier discussions on crowdfunding (and ongoing) campaign, here’s a 1st draft. Please review, add , comment as you see fit.

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#10

Please add a commenting permission

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#11

Sorry try now, thought I did this yesterday.

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#12

An expanded update is due on this item.

This is separate more focused on campaigning & crowd engagement from the weekly bizDev meeting (every Sunday at 1900 , see notes from 2019-04-21)

A group of people in TAMI are working on Marketing and homing in on launching a campaign (El Campaign) on a public popular campaigning platform (e.g. Mimoona, Kickstarter, Indiegogo)

  • Telegram Focus group opened for Marketing & Campaign [CLICK2JOIN]
  • Wekan for Marketing Tasks
  • Wekan for DIY & TAMI Improvement (face-lifting TAMI as the 0th marketing effort)
    • A major DIY face-lifting event is planned for one of the upcoming weekends
  • Biohub lost 50,000 NIS donation due to poor presentation of place. Work in progress.
  • Marketing material in googledocs,
  • “Intro to Tami” was a major PR event was successful in attendance and responses. People who visited are starting to show up!
  • Another intro to TAMI awaiting final confirmation – tentative 30th of May
  • Content team is adding videos periodically to increase exposure.
  • As precursor to “The Campaign” a Patreon/TAMI has been launched (suitable in the creators community)
    • needs seed funders!
    • Still lacks a promo-video
    • Will need someone to maintain it, currently it is in low-key.
  • Patreon/TAMISHOP also launched to be able to sell singular stuff in the same platform
    • May be redundant once we launched “The Campaign”
    • Needs more work and items to be put on.
  • Group of investors waiting to get pitched, promo video is key here too, as for many other purposes (see spec sheet, target audiences).
  • Decision to remove any possible hurdle from paying to TAMI:
    • Donations desk built at entrance
    • Links to every possible payment method to be adopted (paypal, bit, pepperpay, direct transfer, Culo etc)
    • QR codes to be spread around TAMI for these links.
  • [TAMI Telegram group opened for publiCLICK2JOIN]
  • Call for video volunteers on Facebook group got several responses.
    • Aiming to form a campaign team (~2weeks) that will create and edit the video once talked and aligned with all prospective volunteers.
    • Call summaries to be added separately.
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#13

Any news re. the sponser I referred you guys to? did anyone had a chat with them?

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