Unusual Uses of EDDM® – Crowdfunding using EDDM®

This write-up speaks directly to the basic steps of crowdfunding, and, how to use direct mail to achieve the fundraising goal. Our company has done crowdfunding before with direct mail and feels qualified to provide specific, practical guidance from direct experience.

Introduction

Raising capital through online crowdfunding, while relatively new as an industry, has quickly become a respectable means for new businesses, as well as not-for-profit organizations or even municipalities, to raise funds quickly on a retail level. Even a small group of concerned citizens may now raise monies to pull off a street festival, library addition, or simply build a new park pavilion.

Just as it sounds, “crowd-funding” implies that a large number of people (a “crowd”) would donate or invest funds towards your idea or charitable cause. “Many hands might light work”, but it takes a lot of small bricks to build a big wall. So, to achieve a targeted goal quickly, short of asking all your friends and family for cash contributions, the crowdfunding model is a highly adopted fundraising channel, and there is a plethora of “how to” material on the internet. However, very little of that material talks about the power of direct mail to reach a goal.

The purpose of this posting is to assist you in understanding and potentially using a unique direct mail awareness and marketing approach, such as with Every Door Direct Mail, which may complement other fundraising awareness efforts. Again, for us, this isn’t just a “cocktail napkin idea”; and, we provide tips on how to manage your web presence once a direct mailing has been released.

Start with Internet Presence

Crowdfunding is a public effort – you are maximizing your publicity to a crowd of people, and there’s no better “crowd” than the internet. Therefore, having a web presence is your first step. Thankfully, there is no conflict between online crowdfunding and direct mail! You are going to use direct mail to drive people to the internet. In short, you are to use direct mail to raise “cash and awareness” and sell your story. Depending upon your level of incorporation, and your organization’s unique purpose and direction, you may wish to consider these popular internet options (as of 2024):

For Small Business: Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Crowdfunder, StartEngine and SeedInvest.
For Non-Profit Organizations: GoFundMe Charity, Mightycause, FirstGiving, NetworkForGood, Rally and Etherium.org.
Best for Individuals: GoFundMe, Patreon, and Funded.

Make a Plan (The One-Pager)

This doesn’t have to be hard, so don’t make it hard. Use tools that are “out there” and easy to adopt. That said, crowdfunding requires strategic planning and execution to be effective. A one-page to two-page plan should be sufficient. Here are basic questions you can ask to get your plan in shape – keep it short and sweet – this is an outline, not a novel:

NON-PROFIT CROWDFUNDING PLAN EXAMPLE (ANIMAL RESCUE SHELTER OR SPCA):

Who are you?   (e.g. “We are Friends of the Statewide SPCA”)

What is the charitable, educational, or philanthropic problem you need to solve?   (“We have 50 dogs who need either care or new homes; our volunteers are overwhelmed with the post-COVID influx of animals”)

How much are you trying to raise?   (“$10,000 will provide the veterinarian care these dogs need before they can be adopted by qualified, loving families”)

Why are you making this effort?   (“We have had an influx of other animals and our out of space. These animals will need either homes or care that we cannot afford to keep them.”)

What is the community benefit?   (“We will have healthy pets who will bring joy and comfort to local homes and families”)

What specifically does help look like?   (“Please go to our online platform __________________ and either donate min. $100 or more or, please apply to volunteer online here at our website: ______________”. 100 citizens x $100 gets us to our goal!”)

What happens if you don’t reach your goal?   (“Some of these pets will need to be destroyed without support.”)

How will you celebrate the success of this effort?   (“If we make our goal, there will be an open-to-all pot-luck dinner for everyone who wishes to come”)

FRONT:

BACK:

FOR-PROFIT CROWDFUNDING PLAN EXAMPLE (RETAIL SMALL BUSINESS):

Who are you? (e.g. “we Billy and Sally Goodwill, 25+ year members of the community”)

What are you trying to do?   (“We have followed boutique retail trends and believe there is an opportunity for a dry goods store in Rivertown”)

What are your credentials or experience?   (“Sally has over 20 years in retail outlet clothing goods experience, and, Billy has been a distribution manager for the past 15 years before retirement”.)

How much are you trying to raise?   (“$250,000 seed money is what we need to match our own savings”)

Why are you making this effort?   (“We have studied the market in similar high net-worth regions and have seen this work; a business coach has helped us with a business plan; and, now that Bill is retired, Sally could make the jump to work with him.” [note: it will certainly help to have third-party statistics, industry trends, etc., but save those for the website – you are just trying to bottom line the pitch here.])

What is the community benefit?   (“We will look to hire local part-time help, and, bring business revenue into our community and away from box stores.”)

What specifically does help look like?   (“please go to our online platform _________________ to invest min. $2,500 or more. 100 investors x $2500 works; or, 25 investors x $10,000 works to reach our goal. Please contact us here at our website: ______________ to learn more or speak with Sally or Billy.”

What happens if you don’t reach your goal?   (“We will return received investor funds if we don’t get to $250K by __________.”)

What are the risks and rewards?   (“Our hope is to have a successful enterprise that would have some level of profit sharing, but also could be sold in 5 – 7 years. As with all investments, there is high risk but we also have our own matching savings, and therefore have skin in the game on this.”)

How will you celebrate the success of this effort?   (“When we make our goal, we will have a VIP Soft Opening, with all investors automatically part of our VIP Club, with appreciation gifts for each person.”)

Get A Website & Mild Social Media

Before we get to an EDDM® or Every Door Direct Mail effort, we suggest you get a website in place. If you are a “Friends of” Group or are supporting an existing non-profit, then it would be smart to piggyback on the existing website by setting up a dedicated page for the crowdfunding effort. If you have a stand-alone and informal “concerned citizens” group or have a community action committee, then getting a modest, simple website is highly recommended.

Not surprisingly, your website is going to expand upon the questions and answers outlined in your one-pager pitch letter. On your website, we would recommend pages such as the following (not a complete list):

• Our Mission (with a thermometer on funds raised)
• About Us (it helps not to be an army-of-one; show endorsements & testimonials if possible)
• How to Donate (with a list of donors, if allowable)
• Business Plan (for small business crowdfunding)
• Risks & Benefits (usually for small business crowdfunding)
• Calendar
• Media/News
• Contact Us

Cornerstone Services builds websites and would like to help you build yours. To reach us, please reach us on our contact page and tell us more about your crowdfunding effort. Simple, static websites start for as little as $1,000 or $1,500 for sites with fundraising pages.

A Facebook page by itself usually generally does not denote the level of organizational maturity that most people anticipate if you were to be taken seriously. Certainly, it helps to have a Facebook page along with other social media efforts, especially YouTube, but having nothing more than a Facebook page is fine. The key is to keep adding credibility to your efforts with a mildly expanded web presence; in other words, you want to be able to engage your audience, once it receives a saturation direct mailpiece, to explain in more depth (than may be done with direct mail) the mission, purpose and value of your crowdfunding effort. In short, with the EDDM® mailing, we want to drive people online to support the crowdfunding effort.

If you did just one video, which could be put on the website, then you want to make it no more than a 5 to 10-minute video, simply addressing the questions above. The idea is to be consistent with the messaging and on point with your mission-critical value proposition. With videos, you are inviting people to like you. Put another way, familiarity breeds comfort, and when you come across as real people and not as an impersonal business plan, then you have a better shot at adopting adherents to your cause or new business idea. In an odd way, avoid too much storytelling – if you get someone to watch a 10-minute video, in the era of TikTok, then you’ve done something quite impressive.

Websites that we build may also be used to request and pull in both email addresses and donor information such as mailing addresses and possible volunteering. If you can get enough email addresses, you may use other programs to launch ongoing electronic and direct mail communications. The purpose here would be to plan for ongoing communications and updates to those who express genuine interest. If people reach you via other means (text messages, phone, email), just ask them to go to the website and “sign up” on a dedicated contact page. Your justification is “That’s how we are managing the communications effort; thanks for understanding”. Your time is valuable, so you want to redirect and channel well-intentioned citizens, investors, or interested third parties to a platform method that you may more easily manage.

For most non-profit organizations or smaller crowdfunding groups, other social media options such as X (Twitter), Instagram, Pinterest, etc. are probably not needed.

Crowdfunding Using Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM®)

There are several ways to proceed, and all are simple with the help of a seasoned mailing service provider like Cornerstone Services, Inc.

EDDM® (Every Door Direct Mail) makes sense for a new venture, non-profit organization, or service that has either a “brick and mortar” building or a proximity range for its services. If you are raising money for a new playground or retail business, then we would look at the USPS® postal carrier routes that made sense in light of either radius or “lines of transit”. (Lines of transit are a term that we use for the routes that people travel to reach or drive through a specific location.) EDDM® can also make sense when you are looking at affluence indicators (e.g. household income or average home values) as a determinator for macro-level recipient profiling.

Credit: USPS.com

If we look at Kingston NY 12401, you can see that the ZIP Code alone likely isn’t helpful enough – the Kingston area is very wide and ranges from city route to rural route addresses (let alone a significant number of PO Boxes). Thankfully, there is additional information to help select routes. Aside from proximity, other factors to consider are:

Age Range

Credit: USPS.com

Average Household Size
Average Household Income
Business+Residential Addresses vs. Residential Only

Ultimately, you have to pick a full carrier route for EDDM® mailing purposes. Now, if the target audience cannot be targeted, then you may want help in selecting a consumer list profile that better reflects the audience you’re attempting to attract. Here, using the above examples of a Dry Goods retail store and SPCA non-profit mailpiece, possible non-EDDM® consumer list profiling may include (respectively) investment/wealth flags or household indices such as “homes with dogs” or “homes with pets”. If you would like a quote for a custom non-EDDM® mailing, please email us at info@crst.net or go here to the Cornerstone contact page.

By setting up your crowdfunding approach on an established web-based platform and accompanying website, and by enacting street-smart strategies including a straightforward one-page write-up, a well-crafted EDDM®/direct mail campaign can be compellingly effective.