As a small business, raising enough capital for your organisation remains to be a major issue. Due to lack of experience, many businesses have limited knowledge of the array of options available to raise funds.
In today’s article, we discuss the details of crowdfunding, one of the options available for SMEs to raise capital for their business.
GoFundMe
GoFundMe is a crowdfunding platform created for both business and personal causes. Although campaigns to fund personal causes such as education, medical treatments, and sports events are predominant on the website, it is free to use and is not all or nothing. This means that regardless of the outcome – whether or not you reach your funding goal – you are entitled to keep the amount that you raised. There is also a 5% fee from each donation obtained.
For more information click here: https://www.gofundme.com/
Kickstarter
Considered to be the mother of all crowdfunding websites, Kickstarter is immensely popular. However, the downside would be that it is highly saturated so projects may either be extremely successful or fail completely. Due to their all or nothing system, if you do not manage to reach your target, you will not receive anything. Therefore, careful planning and extensive knowledge of the market is crucial.
For more information, click here: https://www.kickstarter.com/
Indiegogo
Indiegogo is an extremely popular crowdfunding platform. One benefit of Indiegogo is that it allows you to choose between the all-or-nothing option, and keep-what-you-earn. Although the latter may seem more ideal, keep in mind that you have to follow through with your project till the end regardless of how much (or how little) you have raised. Projects on Indiegogo are predominantly related to technology and creative works.
For more information, click here: https://www.indiegogo.com/
All three platforms are extremely beneficial to help you raise capital without taking a loan or giving up equity. Furthermore, the added advantage of the social aspect of capital raising can help you to gauge market interest as well, though you would have to pay taxes on the amount you receive.
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