Connecting funding to communities

Asylum Seekers Resource Centre

Kon Karapanagiotidis and Patrick Lawrence, Founder and CEO of the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre (ASRC), were determined to do something about the plight of thousands of asylum seekers in Melbourne, beyond the reach of their current operations.

Both Karapanagiotidis and Lawrence were increasingly aware of the harsh reality faced by asylum seekers in Australia, many of whom exist on just $20 per week for food. They came up with an exciting idea to address the need to afford healthy, fresh food on minimal income.

Their idea was a mobile market called The Food Justice Truck, which would buy directly from local growers and sell fresh produce to the general public at market rates, allowing the Truck to simultaneously sell to asylum seekers at a 75 per cent discount. This venture would allow the community to buy local and healthy food while also helping improve the lives of asylum seekers.

In order to launch such a significant program they needed to raise funding from new sources, rather than relying on the supporters of their existing, and equally vital, work. They chose crowdfunding as the perfect tool to rally a community behind their vision and last June launched what became one of the largest philanthropic crowdfunding campaigns in Australia’s history, raising over $153,000 to put the truck on the road.

The Rhythm Hut

The team behind The Rhythm Hut, a not-for-profit (NFP) community centre devoted to the rhythmic arts, on the Central Coast just north of Sydney, also found a challenge they were determined to overcome. They had just been evicted. They too would need to rely on their community, not to launch a new program, but to save what they already had.

Until recently there would have been few options to raise these funds to save a community centre like The Rhythm Hut. A grant wouldn’t move fast enough, a bank would be very unlikely to give them a loan, a larger donation is unlikely to materialise unless someone capable of providing it is already engaged, and that was not the case here.

So The Rhythm Hut team turned to their community with a specific make-or-break goal of $25,000 and 30 days to achieve it. And an amazing thing happened. 222 supporters contributing over $35,000, powered them into their (soundproofed) new home. One of those supporters even wrote in to say that “Your initiative is transformative. Our community came together in a way that raised our sense of ownership to a new level”.

Donor behaviour shift

That’s the feeling most potential donors are looking for today. Philanthropy is shifting from being passive to participatory. Donors want to do more than just write a cheque. And this is a thread to business-as-usual for mission-driven organisations because fewer donors are prepared to make a life-long commitment or sign up for reoccurring donations. Instead they’ll seek opportunities to engage in specific campaigns and projects they feel passionately about. And if existing organisations don’t provide those opportunities they’ll just create them for themselves.

Crowdfunding is a big part of this shift because it offers this participatory opportunity, while simultaneously raising vital funds to support innovative new projects.

A new approach

By being accountable for goals and time-frames, crowdfunding campaigns become a community effort, lifting a project that the community cares about towards realisation. This requires new skills and a new approach for many NFPs.

These skills include:

• Transparency – crowdfunding forces you to be specific about how much you need and links pledges to this amount being achieved, ensuring that donors know their funds are part of really making the project they care about happen.
• Empowering Supporters – successful campaigns focus on the community as the enabler, telling a story which invites participation. Rather than being about what ‘they’ ought to do the focus is usually on what ‘we’ can do right now. As a result, crowdfunding does a fantastic job of converting donors into advocates.
• Being Social – crowdfunding is tied in with social media, so having an active presence is a huge help. As with any other call to action, it helps to have cultivated the relationship first and social media is a great way to do this. The campaign then becomes an opportunity for these existing connections to introduce you to their networks. The ASRC estimates 80 per cent of their supporters came from this channel.

Urgency – crowdfunding campaigns only allow for a set period of time during which you have to reach your goal. This creates a more game-like dynamic in part by raising the stakes and the urgency. This has a great focusing effect.

The benefits of a crowdfunding campaign go well beyond the dollars raised, and occur even if the goal isn’t reached. Marist Youth Care recently fundraised through crowdfunding for their Pink Lightning Website project. While they didn’t reach their goals, the campaign did reach a new supporter who is now creating their website pro-bono. This partnership was possible only through public fundraising and a publicised focus on specific goals.

Marist Youth Care

Marist Youth Care used crowdfunding through a matched giving program run by the Inner North Community Foundation, on the StartSomeGood platform. Inner North were looking to increase the impact of their giving by inspiring matched contributions from the community and increased learnings for their grantees.

“Capacity building, fundraising insights and profile building were the top three gains for most of the community organisations that took part. It was also a catalyst for many to reach new donors, reignite old supporters, and take a deeper leap into the social media space,” says Genevieve Timmons, Chair of the Inner North Community Foundation.

In all instances, the lesson is the same. Start with your community, and inspire them to carry you to where you need to go.