The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding for Schools

At Chuffed.org, we love seeing parents, teachers,  students – people like you – coming together to support their local school. We’ve seen campaigners raise thousands for playgrounds, excursions, programs and plenty more.

To help you run the most successful school crowdfunding campaigns that you can, we’ve put together this guide that will step you through creating an effective crowdfunding page.  

The Crowdfunding Campaign page

A crowdfunding campaign page is the page on Chuffed.org where you’ll direct supporters, donors, friends and family. It includes the details of who you are, what you are trying to achieve and how you plan to do so. It’s the place supporters actually donate to your campaign.

Choosing the right options and including information in an easily digestible way is important and can be the difference between a good campaign and a great one.

A campaign page looks a bit like this example (below) from the Central Coast Montessori Primary School. The title is at the top, followed by the name of your organisation. To the left of the screen under the title is the campaign banner or video; on the right is the campaign target and counter. Under this is a box containing your campaign’s ‘pitch’ and buttons supporters use to initiate their donations. 

Beneath these is the main body text outlining your campaign’s story – the campaign description. The tabs can be switched to show comments from supporters, and names of supporters. On the right next to the main story are where perks are listed should you choose to have them.  

Click here to see the full campaign page. 

 

Setting up your campaign page

All the components of a crowdfunding campaign page are stepped out below alongside examples from successful school campaigns we’ve hosted on Chuffed.org.  

We’ve also created this handy Google Doc template that you can use to collaborate with your team. It contains some more examples from great campaigns.

To start setting up your crowdfunding campaign page, head to chuffed.org/start.

 

1. Campaign title

This is what your campaign is called. The title shows at the top of your campaign page and is shared with potential supporters when you share the campaign out via Facebook and Twitter – so the title (along with the banner image – more about that below) is the first thing people will see.

Good titles are less than 5 words long and are like the title of a book: memorable or catchy. You might include alliteration, a question, a play on words or unique spelling.

Some real examples from successful campaigns:

  • Graduate to Greatness
  • Education in a suitcase
  • Rocklands Book Nook Appeal
  • How Cool is Our School – a – thon 
  • Every kid deserves a slam dunk!

 

2. Target

All campaigns on Chuffed.org need to set a campaign funding target. You’ll receive your funds even if you don’t hit your target, but it’s important to set your target at an achievable level to build credibility with your supporters.

You should set your target based on three factors:

  1. Cost: What does it cost to deliver your project?
  2. Audience size: How many people do you have already in your database or email list?
  3. Available time: How much time do you have to prepare in the 4 weeks prior to the campaign and promote during your campaign?

As a rough rule of thumb, we find that the following is a reasonable way to set your target:

Email contacts are the most valuable, followed by Facebook friends and then Twitter or LinkedIn contacts.

 

3. Timeframe

On Chuffed.org, you can choose to either run your campaign for a fixed length of time (90 days or less) or ongoing with no end date in what we call Infinity Mode.

If it’s your first campaign, we generally find that you’ll raise the most when you run a 30-40 day campaign. The reason for this is that the time pressure forces your team to act, which drives momentum, which brings more people to your campaign. Campaigns that stretch on for a long period of time struggle to gain interest because supporters get distracted by other things in their lives.

 

4. Writing up your campaign

This is where you tell your supporters about your project: why your cause is important and what you are doing to make a difference.

 

Pitch

The pitch is short blurb to describe what you’re doing in 200 characters. It sits in a box just under you campaign target on the campaign page.

It is what potential supporters are likely to read first and helps them understand quickly what your project is about. Remember: they’re busy, and they’ll be skim reading, so the pitch is your chance to grab their attention and tell them why they should read your full campaign description. Be as succinct, specific and engaging as you can.

Here are some examples of good pitches used by real school campaigns on Chuffed.org: 

Please help Rocklands school to rejuvenate our library. Every penny will count, from furniture to books, we’d love your help! Please support our 73 children build their dream library.

We are raising funds for Crestmont, our beloved parent co-operative school in Richmond, California. We need a permanent home in order to sustain Crestmont’s legacy. Please consider making a donation today!

Montmorency Primary School needs your help… we’re hoopless!

And some not so great pitches:

Help us build a new building for our school.

We’re trying to produce and distribute books that inspire our children to become AMAZING people.

 

Campaign description

This is the larger block of text on your campaign page and it’s where you can go into detail about what you’re doing. The best campaigns use about 300-500 words, combined with pictures, to tell a story about the change they want to make and how they plan to do it. You can even embed images or videos that you might have (in addition to the main campaign banner or video – described below).

As your campaign progresses, you can keep editing your campaign description. It’s a great place to put in progress updates- like Edgar’s Mission did in this award winning campaign – so that supporters who are checking your page regularly have fresh content to enjoy. The folk at North Perth Primary School also did this really well in their campaign to build new outdoor play equipment.

Below is a simple structure you can use for your campaign description. The example we’ve used is a summarised version of the excellent North Perth Free-Climbing Dome campaign run by North Perth Primary School. Click here to see their full campaign page.

 

EXAMPLE CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION STRUCTURE

Section: Background

In this section:

  • Introduce your vision for change and/or the story of who you are.
  • Tell supporters briefly about the issue you’re addressing and why you want to do something about it.
  • Use first person stories over facts and numbers to paint a picture.

Example 

North Perth Primary School desperately needs more play equipment. So the P&C set out to find a solution. During our research we learned that imaginative physical play is proven to help children’s development: socially, emotionally, physically and intellectually.

 

Section: What we’re doing

This is where you should:

  • Describe your project in practical detail. If you’re building something, show drawings or images of what it’s going to look like.

Example

We found the perfect solution in the Explorer Dome – a multi-layered net structure developed in Germany – designed to provide unlimited opportunities for challenging, imaginative play.

We have the perfect place for it on the school oval, where our kids can enjoy the active play that we know helps build strong bodies, minds and hearts. And in that lovely grassy spot, all the children and families in the community can enjoy it after school and on weekends. It’s perfect.

 

Section: What we’ll do with the funds 

In this part you should:

  • Break down your target and talk about what exactly the money will be spent on.

Example

But large free-climbing domes that’ll last a lifetime don’t come cheap. The Explorer Dome will cost around $85,000. We’ve been working hard to raise the money for over a year now. The P&C has raised $25,000, the school has committed $10,000 and the City of Vincent has generously donated $10,000.

We just need the final $40,000 to make it happen. That’s around $88 for every student the school. 

 

Section: Who we are

People give to people. They want to supporter a person, not a faceless project. So:

  • Add a bio of yourself and your team.
  • Add quotes from well known people to build credibility.

Example

*North Perth Primary School use the visuals in their campaign video to show their school community at play.  

 

Additional sections 

You may also want to include sections in this main body text about:

  • Perks – Describe the perks that donors get back for donations at different donation levels. You can insert pictures that show them.
  • Media – Tell supporters about any media articles you get about your campaign. You can use the logos of the media outlets to build credibility.

 

Another example 

Another great example comes from Rocklands Community Primary School in Norfolk, who blitzed their £10,000 target (raising £12,731) to put towards a new library.  See their campaign page here. They take a different approach to the structure laid out above – presenting first information about the problem they have and then the solution and how donors can help.  

 

5. Banner image

The banner image is the main visual element of your campaign. It’s the first thing potential supporters see and it gets shared on Facebook and Twitter alongside the campaign’s title.

You want your image to:

  • Make your supporters feel inspired, entertained or curious, not guilty or shocked.
  • Be formatted to 684 x 385 pixels for optimal compatibility on our site.
  • Be in a normal image format – JPG, PNG or BMP.

For clarity, Chuffed.org is a guilt-free site. We reject campaigns that use guilt-imagery like dehumanizing photos of starving children to get donations, or graphic, disturbing images of animals.

This one comes from Merrylands East Public School’s campaign to raise funds for equipment and expertise for digital storytelling. View their campaign here.

 

6. Video

The best crowdfunding campaigns include a campaign video. This is a specific 2-5 minute video created for the campaign. Don’t use a generic promotion video designed for something else.

Campaign videos don’t need to be expensive or have high production value. It’s far more important that the video tells a compelling story than looks pretty.

Here are some tips:

  • People love seeing faces. Make sure the video includes relevant people talking at the camera at some point.
  • Keep it short. People get bored easily, so unless you’ve got an incredible storyline, don’t have a video longer than 3 minutes.
  • Be ridiculously enthusiastic. Not only do viewers feed off your enthusiasm, video has a weird way of taking normal speech and making it look like you’re bored senseless. If you act ridiculously enthusiastic, it looks completely normal on video.
  • Use narrative storytelling over facts. People share stories, not facts. An easy way of doing this is to follow one person’s story – which could be your own or a beneficiary.
  • Later model phone cameras and DSLR cameras take excellent quality videos. If you can pair that with a free movie editing package like iMovie on Mac, you can create fairly professional looking video for free.
  • If you do end up paying a production company for your video, budget at least $2,500/£1,500 for a 2 minute video.

All videos on Chuffed.org need to be uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo first. You then enter the URL from either service into the relevant field in the campaign editor.

Examples: For some inspiration, take a look at these amazing videos: 

 

7. Creating perks

Perks are things that you offer supporters who donate above a specific amount.

We get asked a lot about perks, especially about how important they are for crowdfunding success? Do I really need to offer perks? Won’t it stop people being philanthropic?

Our answer? Perks help. A LOT.

The reason for this is that perks give people a way of participating in your campaign. They tap into selfish motivations as well as benevolent motivations. And they let you access your supporters’ spending purse, not just their philanthropic purse — you can guess which of these is bigger.

So what perks should you offer?

Perks tend to fall into three categories:

  1. Pre-release products or services: ‘Selling’ products and services via crowdfunding is probably the most common type of perk. Whether it’s a cookbooka weekend away, tickets to your event, memberships, CDs, bee-hives or even crepes, forward selling products and services is a great way to get people involved in your project.
  2. Unique experiences: Most schools don’t realise it, but they can be well placed to offer unique experiences. It could be tickets to the campaign success party, bumper stickers or personalised pavers, through to seed packets or hand dyed wool made by the school students. Or even school merchandise
  3. Special recognition: A non-profit classic. Getting their name on or sponsoring a part of a project is still popular among many crowds. The key here is being creative on what can be sponsored. Edgar’s Mission had barns, rocks, rakes, posts, shelters and even a mountain. You could do new school buildings, sponsors’ names printed on equipment or sponsorship of tickets for a student to attend an event.

So, how do you come up with perks?

This might sound obvious, but the easiest way to come up with perks is to co-design them with potential donors. Edgar’s Mission ran a workshop with some of its key volunteers prior to its campaign to come up with their perks. Spacecubed – a co-working space in Perth – did the same with their members. It’s best to have a hypothesis on your perks as a starting point, as well as the levels you need perks at (normally $25, $50, $100, $250, $1000, $2500, $5000).

Some other considerations:

  • Have perks that are directly connected to your campaign These let people participate in your campaign or project and are far better than unconnected perks, e.g. Amazon gift cards.
  • Have an early bird offer on your perks This is a great way to build momentum. Spacecubed released a very limited number of highly discounted memberships in the first 24 hours of their campaign.
  • Some perks (drugs, anything illegal, raffles) are not allowed Make sure you check our terms to stay on the right side of the rules. 

Another option – impact levels 

If you can’t find appropriate perks, you might like to try what we call ‘impact levels’ where you can choose to show donors what impact different levels of donations make – think the classic £50 buys a goat for a farmer in Africa. It’s a bit old-school, but still works. Rocklands Community School in Norfolk did this well. 

8. Payment options

When you’re setting up your campaign, you’ll have to choose what payment options you give to your donors. Your two options are:

  • Credit/debit cards: Donors can use any domestic or international Visa, Mastercard or American Express card to pay directly on our site (recommended). To use this payment option, you’ll need to create an account with Stripe for the funds to be transferred to. If you’re running an Australian campaign then you’ll just need to give us your bank details so we can transfer credit/debit card donations to you there.
  • PayPal: Donors can pay using their PayPal accounts.

Tip: Donors find the credit/debit card payment system much easier to use than PayPal. The donation process happens entirely on the Chuffed.org site – they just enter their card details and it works. PayPal unfortunately is confusing for a lot of donors and regularly rejects valid cards and accounts. They may also unexpectedly restrict your PayPal account if your campaign is very successful. We recommend only using PayPal as a secondary option with the credit/debit card system.

The way that you receive the funds from the two systems depends on which country you choose for your campaign – this should be a country where you have a bank account:

(1) During the campaign creation process, you will need to create an account with our payment processing provider, Stripe.com. This is a very simple, one form process, which will take less than 5 minutes.

(2) To accept PayPal payments, you will need to create a Premier or Business PayPal account at www.paypal.com, prior to launching your campaign. The campaign will need to be confirmed and connected to a bank account. This can take up to 3 months.

 

9. Additional options  

On Chuffed.org, there are a number of optional customisations for your campaign page, including:

  • Collecting addresses from your donors: we’ll add an address collection form on the payment page if you select this. We only recommend collecting addresses when you absolutely need to, like if you need to post out a perk, as people feel weird giving about you their address.
  • Custom Thanks Message: you can customise the message that donors see immediately following their donation.
  • Custom URL Link: your can change the default URL link assigned to your campaign.
  • Custom default donation amounts: you can customize the default donation amounts that are shown on the donation box on your campaign page.
  • Offline donations: when supporters send you donations in cash or via cheque/check, you can add these to your campaign total by using our ‘offline donations’ function. You should limit the amount of offline donations to 50% of your total donations.
  • Tax-deductible receipting (US, Canada, Australia):  Available for campaigns in Australia, Canada and the US where your organisation is eligible (e.g. 501(c)3 in US, Deductible Gift Recipient for Australian charities). Every donor will be sent a receipt to meet requirements for them to claim a tax deduction.
  • Gift Aid (UK): Chuffed.org can collect Gift Aid Declarations on behalf of recognized charities or registered community amateur sports clubs (CASC) which you can then submit to HMRC to claim your Gift Aid

 

Submitting for approval

All campaigns on Chuffed.org have to be submitted to us for approval before they can go live. We check that they satisfy our eligibility requirements and that they have a decent chance of reaching their target.

The approval process usually takes less than 24 hours. You will get an email from us that either approves your campaign for launch, asks you to modify your campaign and resubmit, or rejects your campaign outright.

About 60% of campaigns are approved on first submission. Once you’ve had one successfully funded campaign on Chuffed.org, we auto-approve all future campaigns.

 

For more inspiring school campaigns check out…

  • Search the ‘School fundraisers’ and ‘Schools’ subcategories on our movements page. 

 

For more information and tips on how to crowdfund…

If you’d like to read more about how to crowdfund, view our full guide here. Or if you’re ready to draft your campaign, just head here

Peace River Screen Printing Project by Bill Horne

Bill Horne Activist

Bill Horne Activist Photo Credit: Chris Harris

“I am a visual artist and activist living in Wells, BC Canada in Lhtako Dené Territory. In 2015 my partner, Claire Kujundzic and I became involved in resistance to BC Hydro’s proposed Site C dam on the Peace River in northeast British Columbia in Treaty 8 Territory when we drove through the beautiful valley slated for flooding. BC Hydro has no market for this power; the dam is not needed. Yet near the end of 2017, our government decided to continue its construction.

To support the farmers and First Nations people who have been trying to stop the dam, I designed and printed shirts in the Cree and Dane-zaa as languages. My goal was to create graphics depicting what we want to support rather than what we oppose. Making indigenous languages visible can also help rectify the legacy of colonialism that has extinguished so many languages. I have printed other shirts since then and created a number of sculptures about resistance to the dam.

Bill Screen Printing

By sharing screen printing techniques at the Treaty 8 Tribal Association in Fort St John, BC, I hope to assist people in the area to unleash their own creative printing projects regardless of their purposes, be it for fundraising, campaigns to protect the Peace River or individual art projects that reflect the cultures of Treaty 8 Territory.”
Bill Horne

Learn more about Bill’s inspiring environmental activism on his crowdfunding campaign page for the Peace River Screen Printing Project below:

ARCH Rescue Centre: Helping Ankara the mare face a better future

ARCH Team

ARCH Team“I’ve always loved working with horses, probably stemming from growing up in Zambia in the 80’s where it was one of the few available options for entertainment. My parents moved to Spain several years ago and I’ve been spending a lot of time visiting so I decided to join the local horse sanctuary. I wanted to spend some time volunteering and horses seemed to be the natural route.

I contacted the ARCH stables and they were only too happy to have more hands on deck. They are purely not for profit and run by volunteers. (Supported by the ARCH charity shop that just about manages to cover the stable’s daily expenses). They tend to take only the worst cases at the stables when abused or neglected horses or donkeys are confiscated by the local police. The confiscated animals that are in relatively good condition (i.e stable, not critical) are fairly quickly re-homed but the more severe cases take quite a bit of time to recover and rehabilitate and get accustomed to a loving human touch.

The average morning consists of clearing out the several wheelbarrows of manure, feeding the horses hard feed and hay, grooming and medicating where necessary and generally making sure everything is in order. We then get ready for the afternoon feed and later the afternoon volunteers ensure the feed is turned into manure ready for the morning wheelbarrows.

Then there are the days where someone needs to go and investigate a claim or attend a police confiscation, and it can get a little hairy at times I can tell you! It’s obviously better to educate the owners than to resort to confiscation, but sometimes it’s the only way.

The worst cases at the stables have helped me overcome my squeemishness, one just has to get on with it. It’s also great just to be around the horses and make new friends, of which there are many! The hard work and heartache is all worth it in the end when you see the healthy horses in their new homes, happily running free. ”
Leon Patras, ARCH Rescue Centre

For more on the awesome work of the ARCH Rescue Centre, check out their crowdfunding campaign page:

The Ultimate Crowdfunding Guide for Health Charities

At Chuffed.org, we want to see our awesome health campaigners – people like you – run the most successful crowdfunding campaigns that they can. 

So – based on our experience with over 8,000 campaigns, we’ve put together this guide that will step you through creating a strong  crowdfunding campaign page to strengthen the foundations of your campaign.  

 

The Crowdfunding Campaign page

A crowdfunding campaign page is the page on Chuffed.org where you’ll direct supporters, donors, friends and family. It will include the details of who you are, what you are trying to achieve and how you plan to do so, and, it is the place supporters actually donate to your campaign.

Choosing the right options and including information in an easily digestible way is important and can be the difference between a good campaign and a great one.

A campaign page looks a bit like this example from Homeless Healthcare. The title is at the top, followed by the name of your organisation. To the left of the screen under the title is the campaign banner or video; on the right is the campaign target and counter. Under this is a box containing your campaign’s ‘pitch’ and buttons supporters use to initiate their donations. 

Beneath these is the main body text outlining your campaign’s story – the campaign description. The tabs can be switched to show comments from supporters, and names of supporters. On the right next to the main story are where perks are listed should you choose to have them.  

Click here to see Homeless Healthcare’s full campaign page. 

 

Setting up your campaign page

All the components of a crowdfunding campaign page are stepped out below alongside examples from successful campaigns run by health organisations that we’ve hosted on Chuffed.org.  

We’ve also created this handy Google Doc template that you can use to collaborate with your team. It contains some more examples from great campaigns.

To start setting up your crowdfunding campaign page, head to chuffed.org/start.

 

1. Campaign title

This is what your campaign is called. The title shows at the top of your campaign page and is shared with potential supporters when you share the campaign out via Facebook and Twitter – so the title (along with the banner image – more about that below) is the first thing people will see.

Good titles are less than 5 words long and are like the title of a book: memorable or catchy. You might include alliteration, a question, a play on words or unique spelling.

Some real examples from successful campaigns:

  • Let’s take concussion out of play!
  • In A Heartbeat … Prevent, Predict, and Detect Heart Disease
  • Cents for Senses
  • Project Piggy Paradise
  • Save Sawtell Cinema
  • Two Good Lunch

 

2. Target

All campaigns on Chuffed.org need to set a campaign funding target. Unlike other platforms, you’ll receive your funds even if you don’t hit your target, but it’s important to set your target at an achievable level to build credibility with your supporters.

You should set your target based on three factors:

  1. Cost: What does it cost to deliver your project?
  2. Audience size: How many people do you have already in your database or email list?
  3. Available time: How much time do you have to prepare in the 4 weeks prior to the campaign and promote during your campaign?

As a rough rule of thumb, we find that the following is a reasonable way to set your target:

Email contacts are the most valuable, followed by Facebook friends and then Twitter or LinkedIn contacts.

 

3. Timeframe

On Chuffed.org, you can choose to either run your campaign for a fixed length of time (90 days or less) or ongoing with no end date in what we call Infinity Mode.

If it’s your first campaign, we generally find that you’ll raise the most when you run a 30-40 day campaign. The reason for this is that the time pressure forces your team to act, which drives momentum, which brings more people to your campaign. Campaigns that stretch on for a long period of time struggle to gain interest because supporters get distracted by other things in their lives.

 

4. Writing up your campaign

This is where you tell your supporters about your project: why your cause is important and what you are doing to make a difference.

 

Pitch

The pitch is a short blurb to describe what you’re doing in 200 characters. It sits in a box just under you campaign target on the campaign page.

It is what potential supporters are likely to read first and helps them understand quickly what your project is about. Remember: they’re busy, and they’ll be skim reading, so the pitch is your chance to grab their attention and tell them why they should read your full campaign description. Be as succinct, specific and engaging as you can.

Here are some examples of good pitches used by real health related campaigns on Chuffed.org: 

The Black Puppy Foundation funds research into mental health issues affecting Australia’s youth. Support your stair climbing colleagues as we raise money for a wonderful cause!

Join Dr Jacobson as he strives to purchase a vital piece of equipment which will have a big impact on adults and children with head & neck cancers and life threatening airway obstructions.

We’re going out on a limb here – literally! Help us engineer an epic STEAM education opportunity for kids by using plastic waste to 3D print ROBOTIC PROSTHETICS for Australians in need. Let’s move!

And some not so great pitches:

We want to give those paralysed from Guillain Barre Syndrome the ability to communicate, join us as we make this happen using NeuroNodes. 

A virtual walkathon is about creating greater awareness and understanding of life with Dementia and Cell Activation Syndrome. Every $ supports The Dementia Society.

Raising money for a cure for dementia.

 

Campaign description

This is the larger block of text on your campaign page and it’s where you can go into detail about what you’re doing. The best campaigns use about 300-500 words, combined with pictures, to tell a story about the change they want to make and how they plan to do it. You can even embed images or videos that you might have (in addition to the main campaign banner or video – described below).

As your campaign progresses, you can keep editing your campaign description. It’s a great place to put in progress updates- like Edgar’s Mission did in this award winning campaign – so that supporters who are checking your page regularly have fresh content to enjoy. 

Below is a simple structure you can use for your campaign description. The example we’ve used is a summarised version of the excellent NRG Collective campaign to create  Rare Revolution Magazine – a resource made for and by children with rare health conditions. We recommend you read the full campaign description.

EXAMPLE CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION STRUCTURE

Section: Background

In this section:

  • Introduce your vision for change and/or the story of who you are.
  • Tell supporters briefly about the issue you’re addressing and why you want to do something about it.
  • Use first person stories over facts and numbers to paint a picture.

Example 

Our journey into rare disease started in 2012, when my son was diagnosed, with xeroderma pigmentosum (XP). Since then, we (sisters, Nicola Miller and Rebecca Stewart) have founded a dedicated XP charity which has grown to have global reach. Following our own frustrations with access to research and having our rare voice heard, we decided just over 12 months ago, to launch a not-for-profit, free subscription magazine and online community, and this has fast become a special place for adults affected by rare disease, from all walks of life so share their experiences and support each other.

But, what we know from talking to children and young people affected by rare, is that they feel under-represented and that their voice and opinions aren’t heard. They, and we, feel it is time that the balance is redressed.

 

Section: What we’re doing

This is where you should:

  • Describe your project in practical detail. If you’re building something, show drawings or images of what it’s going to look like.

Example

We have teamed up with the RARE Together Project by the BPSU and Larissa Kerecuk of Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Rare Disease Centre to create an innovative youth project.

Our youth project brings together a team of ten children and young people aged 8 – 22 years old to form our first ever youth editorial team, creating a dedicated rare disease publication for kids-by-kids.

 

Section: What we’ll do with the funds 

In this part you should:

  • Break down your target and talk about what exactly the money will be spent on.

Example

We have already been working very hard and secured some project partners and investment, but we need your help.

We need to raise a further £20,000 to make this project a reality and give our eager team of budding editors, journalists and creative writers the opportunity to create something very special for young people and carers who live with the challenges of a rare disease.

 

Section: Who we are

People give to people. They want to supporter a person, not a faceless project. So:

  • Add a bio of yourself and your team.
  • Add quotes from well known people to build credibility.

Example

NRG Collective is a not-for-profit organisation, founded by two sisters,Nicola Miller & Rebecca Stewart.

 

Additional sections 

You may also want to include sections in this main body text about:

  • Perks – Describe the perks that donors get back for donations at different donation levels. You can insert pictures that show them.
  • Media – Tell supporters about any media articles you get about your campaign. You can use the logos of the media outlets to build credibility.

 

Another great example comes from the University of Western Australia, who raised over $10,000 to fund research to validate the accuracy of a simple blood test to detect the risk of premature birth.  See their campaign page here. They take a different approach to the structure laid out above – presenting first their vision for the future, followed by how they intend to make it happen. 

 

5. Banner image

The banner image is the main visual element of your campaign. It’s the first thing potential supporters see and it gets shared on Facebook and Twitter alongside the campaign’s title.

This one comes from the Prince of Wales Hospital Foundation’s campaign to raise funds to purchase surgical equipment for life-saving ear, nose and throat procedures. View their campaign here.

You want your image to:

  • Make your supporters feel inspired, entertained or curious, not guilty or shocked.
  • Be formatted to 684 x 385 pixels for optimal compatibility on our site.
  • Be in a normal image format – JPG, PNG or BMP.

For clarity, Chuffed.org is a guilt-free site. We reject campaigns that use guilt-imagery like dehumanizing photos of starving children to get donations, or graphic, disturbing images of animals.

 

6. Video

The best crowdfunding campaigns include a campaign video. This is a specific 2-5 minute video created for the campaign. Don’t use a generic promotion video designed for something else.

Campaign videos don’t need to be expensive or have high production value. It’s far more important that the video tells a compelling story than looks pretty.

Here are some tips:

  • People love seeing faces. Make sure the video includes relevant people talking at the camera at some point.
  • Keep it short. People get bored easily, so unless you’ve got an incredible storyline, don’t have a video longer than 3 minutes.
  • Be ridiculously enthusiastic. Not only do viewers feed off your enthusiasm, video has a weird way of taking normal speech and making it look like you’re bored senseless. If you act ridiculously enthusiastic, it looks completely normal on video.
  • Use narrative storytelling over facts. People share stories, not facts. An easy way of doing this is to follow one person’s story – which could be your own or a beneficiary.
  • Later model phone cameras and DSLR cameras take excellent quality videos. If you can pair that with a free movie editing package like iMovie on Mac, you can create fairly professional looking video for free.
  • If you do end up paying a production company for your video, budget at least $2,500/£1,500 for a 2 minute video.

All videos on Chuffed.org need to be uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo first. You then enter the URL from either service into the relevant field in the campaign editor.

Examples: For some inspiration, take a look at these videos: 

  • Jewish Care Victoria – Cents for Senses campaign to raise funds to build a sensory stimulation room for children with disabilities; 
  • NeuroKinex Charitable Trust – Redefining Possibilities for Kids with Paralysis campaign  to provide rehabilitation resources for children with paralysis. 
  • Hope for Health – Restoring Our Health campaign to train female elders from East Arnhem Land in life-restoring nutrition science to help their communities improve their health.  

 

7. Creating perks

Perks are things that you offer supporters who donate above a specific amount.

We get asked a lot about perks, especially about how important they are for crowdfunding success? Do I really need to offer perks? Won’t it stop people being philanthropic?

Our answer? Perks help. A LOT.

The reason for this is that perks give people a way of participating in your campaign. They tap into selfish motivations as well as benevolent motivations. And they let you access your supporters’ spending purse, not just their philanthropic purse — you can guess which of these is bigger.

So what perks should you offer?

Perks tend to fall into three categories:

  1. Pre-release products or services: ‘Selling’ products and services via crowdfunding is probably the most common type of perk. Whether it’s tickets to your event, t-shirts or chopping  boardsmemberships, bee-hives or even crepes, forward selling products and services is a great way to get people involved in your project.
  2. Unique experiences: Most charities don’t realise it, but they are well placed to provide special or unique experiences. It could be a personalised guided tour, workshops on a farm, tickets to an opening party, or even a chance to swim with whales.
  3. Special recognition: A non-profit classic. Getting their name on or sponsoring a part of a project is still popular among many crowds. The key here is being creative on what can be sponsored. Edgar’s Mission had barns, rocks, rakes, posts, shelters and even a mountain. Making a documentary film? Offer sneak previews of the script or a donor’s name in the credits.

So, how do you come up with perks?

This might sound obvious, but the easiest way to come up with perks is to co-design them with potential donors. Edgar’s Mission ran a workshop with some of its key volunteers prior to its campaign to come up with their perks. Spacecubed – a co-working space in Perth – did the same with their members. It’s best to have a hypothesis on your perks as a starting point, as well as the levels you need perks at (normally $25, $50, $100, $250, $1000, $2500, $5000).

Some other considerations:

  • Have perks that are directly connected to your campaign These let people participate in your campaign or project and are far better than unconnected perks, e.g. Amazon gift cards.
  • Have an early bird offer on your perks This is a great way to build momentum. Spacecubed released a very limited number of highly discounted memberships in the first 24 hours of their campaign.
  • Some perks (drugs, anything illegal, raffles) are not allowed Make sure you check our terms to stay on the right side of the rules. 

If the challenge of generating appropriate perks for your health campaign is too great another alternative, that can add value, is using ‘impact levels’. These show donors what impact different levels of donations make – think the classic £50 buys a goat for a farmer in Africa. It’s a bit old-school, but still works. Perks and impact levels are treated differently within the Chuffed.org campaign editor – so skip past perks and use the impact levels section to define yours. 

 

8. Payment options

When you’re setting up your campaign, you’ll have to choose what payment options you give to your donors. Your two options are:

  • Credit/debit cards: Donors can use any domestic or international Visa, Mastercard or American Express card to pay directly on our site (recommended). To use this payment option, you’ll need to create an account with Stripe for the funds to be transferred to. If you’re running an Australian campaign then you’ll just need to give us your bank details so we can transfer credit/debit card donations to you there.
  • PayPal: Donors can pay using their PayPal accounts.

Tip: Donors find the credit/debit card payment system much easier to use than PayPal. The donation process happens entirely on the Chuffed.org site – they just enter their card details and it works. PayPal unfortunately is confusing for a lot of donors and regularly rejects valid cards and accounts. They may also unexpectedly restrict your PayPal account if your campaign is very successful. We recommend only using PayPal as a secondary option with the credit/debit card system.

The way that you receive the funds from the two systems depends on which country you choose for your campaign – this should be a country where you have a bank account:

(1) During the campaign creation process, you will need to create an account with our payment processing provider, Stripe.com. This is a very simple, one form process, which will take less than 5 minutes.

(2) To accept PayPal payments, you will need to create a Premier or Business PayPal account at www.paypal.com, prior to launching your campaign. The campaign will need to be confirmed and connected to a bank account. This can take up to 3 months.

 

9. Additional options  

On Chuffed.org, there are a number of optional customisations for your campaign page, including:

  • Collecting addresses from your donors: we’ll add an address collection form on the payment page if you select this. We only recommend collecting addresses when you absolutely need to, like if you need to post out a perk, as people feel weird giving about you their address.
  • Custom Thanks Message: you can customise the message that donors see immediately following their donation.
  • Custom URL Link: your can change the default URL link assigned to your campaign.
  • Custom default donation amounts: you can customize the default donation amounts that are shown on the donation box on your campaign page.
  • Offline donations: when supporters send you donations in cash or via cheque/check, you can add these to your campaign total by using our ‘offline donations’ function. You should limit the amount of offline donations to 50% of your total donations.
  • Tax-deductible receipting:  Available for campaigns in Australia, Canada and the US where your organisation is eligible (e.g. Deductible Gift Recipient for Australian organisations). Every donor will be sent a receipt to meet requirements for them to claim a tax deduction.
  • Gift Aid (UK only): Chuffed.org can collect Gift Aid Declarations on behalf of recognized charities or registered community amateur sports clubs (CASC) which you can then submit to HMRC to claim your Gift Aid

 

Submitting for approval

All campaigns on Chuffed.org have to be submitted to us for approval before they can go live. We check that they satisfy our eligibility requirements and that they have a decent chance of reaching their target.

The approval process usually takes less than 24 hours. You will get an email from us that either approves your campaign for launch, asks you to modify your campaign and resubmit, or rejects your campaign outright.

About 60% of campaigns are approved on first submission. Once you’ve had one successfully funded campaign on Chuffed.org, we auto-approve all future campaigns.

 

For more inspiring health check out…

 

For more information and tips on how to crowdfunding…

If you’d like to read more about how to crowdfund, view our full guide here.

And if you’re ready to try drafting a campaign – just head here

 

Koori Kids Special Garden Program at Narooma High by the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust

Laurel & Edwin

Laurel & Edwin
“Back in 1980 I was undergoing major surgery when I suffered a cardiac arrest and went zooming off from my body more fully aware than ever before of our world and our human condition.

When I was turned around with the very clear instructions that I still had ‘my life’s work to do’ and that it wasn’t my time to go ‘home’, I asked that I might be shown what my life purpose was. After some pretty amazing revelations in 1983, along with my husband Edwin, we sold our home and business in Sydney and founded the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust at Goobarragandra near Tumut in NSW. There we worked to provide a centre to support and care for people and the natural environment in a beautiful setting.

Mud brick and timber buildings were built to accommodate guests along with a stone and mud brick chapel which offered a peaceful space and a welcome to people of all faiths or none. These were built with the generous help of many wonderful volunteers. In 1987 we formally founded our charitable Trust and gifted the land and buildings to our Trust so that our work could carry on beyond our own physical ability to provide care and support.

Over twenty years the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust provided a valuable resource offering training programs for the long-term unemployed, Indigenous building programs, cancer patient support programs, workshops, counselling for people facing life threatening illnesses and relationship problems, and respite care for carers, as well as offering individuals and families opportunities for holidays. As a Social Worker I saw the wonderful transformation that loving care and the beauty of nature could offer to troubled lives. All of our work and support was offered on a donation basis. Our Trust continues today and is based on the far south coast of NSW.

While we are now unable to offer accommodation we do continue in our support for those who are needing assistance with life and its challenges. While we care for all people we have a strong passion to assist Aboriginal children to gain an equal footing in our world and so many of our programs have this focus. We currently fund an after school Study Centre at the Wallaga Lake Koori Village near to Bermagui and our latest commitment is to raise the funds for the Koori Kids Gardening Program at Narooma High School to be developed and so inspire change for these children.”

For more on this awesome campaign to help Aboriginal kids who struggle to fit into school and life itself, check out the Elm Grove Sanctuary Trust’s crowdfunding campaign page below:

The Ultimate Guide to Crowdfunding for Environmental Charities

At Chuffed.org, we want to see our awesome environmental protection and conservation campaigners – people like you – run the most successful crowdfunding campaigns that they can. 

So we’ve put together this guide that will step you through creating a strong campaign page to strengthen the foundations of your campaign.  

 

The Crowdfunding Campaign page

A crowdfunding campaign page is the page on Chuffed.org where you’ll direct supporters, donors, friends and family. It will include the details of who you are, what you are trying to achieve and how you plan to do so, and, it is the place supporters actually donate to your campaign.

Choosing the right options and including information in an easily digestible way is important and can be the difference between a good campaign and a great one.

A campaign page looks a bit like this example from Environment Tasmania. The title is at the top, followed by the name of your organisation. To the left of the screen under the title is the campaign banner or video; on the right is the campaign target and counter. Under this is a box containing your campaign’s ‘pitch’ and buttons supporters use to initiate their donations. 

Beneath these is the main body text outlining your campaign’s story – the campaign description. The tabs can be switched to show comments from supporters, and names of supporters. On the right next to the main story are where perks are listed should you choose to have them.  

Click here to see Environment Tasmania’s full campaign page. 

 

Setting up your campaign page

All the components of a crowdfunding campaign page are stepped out below alongside examples from successful environmental protection campaigns we’ve hosted on Chuffed.org.  

We’ve also created this handy Google Doc template that you can use to collaborate with your team. It contains some more examples from great campaigns.

To start setting up your crowdfunding campaign page, head to chuffed.org/start.

 

1. Campaign title

This is what your campaign is called. The title shows at the top of your campaign page and is shared with potential supporters when you share the campaign out via Facebook and Twitter – so the title (along with the banner image – more about that below) is the first thing people will see.

Good titles are less than 5 words long and are like the title of a book: memorable or catchy. You might include alliteration, a question, a play on words or unique spelling.

Some real examples from successful campaigns:

  • Where have all the Grasswrens gone?
  • Build Farmwalls with us!
  • Project Piggy Paradise
  • Save Sawtell Cinema
  • I came by boat
  • Two Good Lunch

 

2. Target

All campaigns on Chuffed.org need to set a campaign funding target. You’ll receive your funds even if you don’t hit your target, but it’s important to set your target at an achievable level to build credibility with your supporters.

You should set your target based on three factors:

  1. Cost: What does it cost to deliver your project?
  2. Audience size: How many people do you have already in your database or email list?
  3. Available time: How much time do you have to prepare in the 4 weeks prior to the campaign and promote during your campaign?

As a rough rule of thumb, we find that the following is a reasonable way to set your target:

Email contacts are the most valuable, followed by Facebook friends and then Twitter or LinkedIn contacts.

 

3. Timeframe

On Chuffed.org, you can choose to either run your campaign for a fixed length of time (90 days or less) or ongoing with no end date in what we call Infinity Mode.

If it’s your first campaign, we generally find that you’ll raise the most when you run a 30-40 day campaign. The reason for this is that the time pressure forces your team to act, which drives momentum, which brings more people to your campaign. Campaigns that stretch on for a long period of time struggle to gain interest because supporters get distracted by other things in their lives.

 

4. Writing up your campaign

This is where you tell your supporters about your project: why your cause is important and what you are doing to make a difference.

 

Pitch

The pitch is short blurb to describe what you’re doing in 200 characters. It sits in a box just under you campaign target on the campaign page.

It is what potential supporters are likely to read first and helps them understand quickly what your project is about. Remember: they’re busy, and they’ll be skim reading, so the pitch is your chance to grab their attention and tell them why they should read your full campaign description. Be as succinct, specific and engaging as you can.

Here are some examples of good pitches used by real environmental protection campaigns on Chuffed.org: 

Help us to share the Climate Choir message! Over 600 singers from community choirs across the country will join to urge action on climate change in the lead up to the UN Climate Conference in Bonn.

Every day the small team at Wildlife Queensland puts its heart and soul into correcting biodiversity loss in Queensland. YOU CAN give us the tools to keep up the good work for our wildlife in 2018!!!

We’re going out on a limb here – literally! Help us engineer an epic STEAM education opportunity for kids by using plastic waste to 3D print ROBOTIC PROSTHETICS for Australians in need. Let’s move!

And some not so great pitches:

We are a volunteer driven not-for-profit organisation that aims to empower communities across the region to address our climate challenges together. Help us support in this work.

An elephant is poached every 15 minutes for their ivory leaving behind many orphans. Help support us to save them and re-integrate them into the wild.

The idea is to start a recycling workshop and involve local and international artists to create art by reducing plastic waste.

 

Campaign description

This is the larger block of text on your campaign page and it’s where you can go into detail about what you’re doing. The best campaigns use about 300-500 words, combined with pictures, to tell a story about the change they want to make and how they plan to do it. You can even embed images or videos that you might have (in addition to the main campaign banner or video – described below).

As your campaign progresses, you can keep editing your campaign description. It’s a great place to put in progress updates- like Edgar’s Mission did in this award winning campaign – so that supporters who are checking your page regularly have fresh content to enjoy. 

Below is a simple structure you can use for your campaign description. The example we’ve used is a summarised version of the excellent Foundation for National Parks and Wildlife campaign to save a colony of Little Penguins. We recommend you read the full campaign description.

 

EXAMPLE CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION STRUCTURE

Section: Background

In this section:

  • Introduce your vision for change and/or the story of who you are.
  • Tell supporters briefly about the issue you’re addressing and why you want to do something about it.
  • Use first person stories over facts and numbers to paint a picture.

Example 

The penguin colony: Amongst the hustle and bustle of Australia’s biggest city, a group of charming and unusual locals have set up home in the popular suburb of Manly.The Manly colony of Little Penguins in Sydney Harbour is the only mainland breeding colony left in New South Wales. This special and unique colony was listed as an endangered population in the 1990s.

But there’s a problem… During June, a fox discovered this colony and devastated the population of Little Penguins at Manly. In just over two weeks, 27 helpless Little Penguins were killed by the fox.

 

Section: What we’re doing

This is where you should:

  • Describe your project in practical detail. If you’re building something, show drawings or images of what it’s going to look like.

Example

In response to these gruesome discoveries, a special team of field officers, National Parks and Wildlife Service rangers, experts and volunteers are keeping watch on the nesting penguins day and night, to protect them from further attacks. At the same time an operation to trap the cunning creature continues.

Foxes are a huge threat to our native fauna and it is highly likely that other foxes in the future will attempt a similar attack. This is why we need your assistance, to help the volunteers and NPWS monitor and protect Manly’s Little Penguins from any future attacks and to help rebuild their endangered colony.

 

Section: What we’ll do with the funds 

In this part you should:

  • Break down your target and talk about what exactly the money will be spent on.

Example

In order to outfox the fox, more specialised equipment is needed as well as additional nest boxes. Here are some of the items FNPW are fundraising for:

  • $10,000 for 20 motion sensing cameras to monitor the area
  • $5,000 for a thermal camera that can detect the heat given off by penguins and predators
  • $450 for 5 fox lights that are triggered by movement and give off bright, flashing lights to scare away foxes
  • $1,000 for 10 nesting boxes to help the penguins rebuild their population

 

Section: Who we are

People give to people. They want to supporter a person, not a faceless project. So:

  • Add a bio of yourself and your team.
  • Add quotes from well known people to build credibility.

Example

The Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife has a long history of supporting the endangered colony of penguins in Manly. Since 1999 the Foundation has been helping fund equipment for volunteer wardens, nest boxes, signage to warn people about the presence of these vulnerable birds, and much more.

FNPW working in partnership with the local NPWS rangers, Taronga Zoo, Manly Council, Manly Environment Centre and the Office of Environment & Heritage has helped keep the Little Penguins in Manly safe up until now.

 

Additional sections 

You may also want to include sections in this main body text about:

  • Perks – Describe the perks that donors get back for donations at different donation levels. You can insert pictures that show them.
  • Media – Tell supporters about any media articles you get about your campaign. You can use the logos of the media outlets to build credibility.

 

Another great example comes from Farmwall, who raised over their $30,000 target to build aquaponic farming systems in Melbourne restaurants that will start to address the environmental impact of the way cities eat by reducing the distance between where food is grown and eaten.  See their campaign page here. They take a different approach to the structure laid out above – presenting first their vision for the future, followed by how they intend to make it happen. 

 

 

5. Banner image

The banner image is the main visual element of your campaign. It’s the first thing potential supporters see and it gets shared on Facebook and Twitter alongside the campaign’s title.

This one comes from 350.org Australia’s campaign to raise funds to oppose the Adani coal mine. View their campaign here.  

You want your image to:

  • Make your supporters feel inspired, entertained or curious, not guilty or shocked.
  • Be formatted to 684 x 385 pixels for optimal compatibility on our site.
  • Be in a normal image format – JPG, PNG or BMP.

For clarity, Chuffed.org is a guilt-free site. We reject campaigns that use guilt-imagery like dehumanizing photos of starving children to get donations, or graphic, disturbing images of animals.

 

6. Video

The best crowdfunding campaigns include a campaign video. This is a specific 2-5 minute video created for the campaign. Don’t use a generic promotion video designed for something else.

Campaign videos don’t need to be expensive or have high production value. It’s far more important that the video tells a compelling story than looks pretty.

Here are some tips:

  • People love seeing faces. Make sure the video includes relevant people talking at the camera at some point.
  • Keep it short. People get bored easily, so unless you’ve got an incredible storyline, don’t have a video longer than 3 minutes.
  • Be ridiculously enthusiastic. Not only do viewers feed off your enthusiasm, video has a weird way of taking normal speech and making it look like you’re bored senseless. If you act ridiculously enthusiastic, it looks completely normal on video.
  • Use narrative storytelling over facts. People share stories, not facts. An easy way of doing this is to follow one person’s story – which could be your own or a beneficiary.
  • Later model phone cameras and DSLR cameras take excellent quality videos. If you can pair that with a free movie editing package like iMovie on Mac, you can create fairly professional looking video for free.
  • If you do end up paying a production company for your video, budget at least $2,500/£1,500 for a 2 minute video.

All videos on Chuffed.org need to be uploaded to Youtube or Vimeo first. You then enter the URL from either service into the relevant field in the campaign editor.

Examples: For some inspiration, take a look at these two campaign videos made by the Conservation Council of Western Australia (Video 1; Video 2) and this one from Environment Tasmania

 

7. Creating perks

Perks are things that you offer supporters who donate above a specific amount.

We get asked a lot about perks, especially about how important they are for crowdfunding success? Do I really need to offer perks? Won’t it stop people being philanthropic?

Our answer? Perks help. A LOT.

The reason for this is that perks give people a way of participating in your campaign. They tap into selfish motivations as well as benevolent motivations. And they let you access your supporters’ spending purse, not just their philanthropic purse — you can guess which of these is bigger.

So what perks should you offer?

Perks tend to fall into three categories:

  1. Pre-release products or services: ‘Selling’ products and services via crowdfunding is probably the most common type of perk. Whether it’s a weekend away, tickets to your event, memberships, CDs, bee-hives or even crepes, forward selling products and services is a great way to get people involved in your project.
  2. Unique experiences: Most environmental protection organisations don’t realise it, but they are nearly always an amazing repository of wonderfully special, unique experiences. It could be a personalised guided tour, workshops on a farm, tickets to an opening party, or even a chance to swim with whales.
  3. Special recognition: A non-profit classic. Getting their name on or sponsoring a part of a project is still popular among many crowds. The key here is being creative on what can be sponsored. Edgar’s Mission had barns, rocks, rakes, posts, shelters and even a mountain. Making a documentary film? Offer sneak previews of the script or a donor’s name in the credits.

So, how do you come up with perks?

This might sound obvious, but the easiest way to come up with perks is to co-design them with potential donors. Edgar’s Mission ran a workshop with some of its key volunteers prior to its campaign to come up with their perks. Spacecubed – a co-working space in Perth – did the same with their members. It’s best to have a hypothesis on your perks as a starting point, as well as the levels you need perks at (normally $25, $50, $100, $250, $1000, $2500, $5000).

Some other considerations:

  • Have perks that are directly connected to your campaign These let people participate in your campaign or project and are far better than unconnected perks, e.g. Amazon gift cards.
  • Have an early bird offer on your perks This is a great way to build momentum. Spacecubed released a very limited number of highly discounted memberships in the first 24 hours of their campaign.
  • Some perks (drugs, anything illegal, raffles) are not allowed Make sure you check our terms to stay on the right side of the rules. 

 

8. Payment options

When you’re setting up your campaign, you’ll have to choose what payment options you give to your donors. Your two options are:

  • Credit/debit cards: Donors can use any domestic or international Visa, Mastercard or American Express card to pay directly on our site (recommended). To use this payment option, you’ll need to create an account with Stripe for the funds to be transferred to. If you’re running an Australian campaign then you’ll just need to give us your bank details so we can transfer credit/debit card donations to you there.
  • PayPal: Donors can pay using their PayPal accounts.

Tip: Donors find the credit/debit card payment system much easier to use than PayPal. The donation process happens entirely on the Chuffed.org site – they just enter their card details and it works. PayPal unfortunately is confusing for a lot of donors and regularly rejects valid cards and accounts. They may also unexpectedly restrict your PayPal account if your campaign is very successful. We recommend only using PayPal as a secondary option with the credit/debit card system.

The way that you receive the funds from the two systems depends on which country you choose for your campaign – this should be a country where you have a bank account:

(1) During the campaign creation process, you will need to create an account with our payment processing provider, Stripe.com. This is a very simple, one form process, which will take less than 5 minutes.

(2) To accept PayPal payments, you will need to create a Premier or Business PayPal account at www.paypal.com, prior to launching your campaign. The campaign will need to be confirmed and connected to a bank account. This can take up to 3 months.

 

9. Additional options  

On Chuffed.org, there are a number of optional customisations for your campaign page, including:

  • Collecting addresses from your donors: we’ll add an address collection form on the payment page if you select this. We only recommend collecting addresses when you absolutely need to, like if you need to post out a perk, as people feel weird giving about you their address.
  • Custom Thanks Message: you can customize the message that donors see immediately following their donation.
  • Impact Levels: instead of giving out perks, you can choose to show donors what impact different levels of donations make – think the classic £50 buys a goat for a farmer in Africa. It’s a bit old-school, but still works.
  • Custom URL Link: your can change the default URL link assigned to your campaign.
  • Custom default donation amounts: you can customize the default donation amounts that are shown on the donation box on your campaign page.
  • Offline donations: when supporters send you donations in cash or via cheque/check, you can add these to your campaign total by using our ‘offline donations’ function. You should limit the amount of offline donations to 50% of your total donations.
  • Tax-deductible receipting:  Available for campaigns in Australia, Canada and the US where your organisation is eligible (e.g. Deductible Gift Recipient for Australian organisations). Every donor will be sent a receipt to meet requirements for them to claim a tax deduction.
  • Gift Aid (UK only): Chuffed.org can collect Gift Aid Declarations on behalf of recognized charities or registered community amateur sports clubs (CASC) which you can then submit to HMRC to claim your Gift Aid

 

Submitting for approval

All campaigns on Chuffed.org have to be submitted to us for approval before they can go live. We check that they satisfy our eligibility requirements and that they have a decent chance of reaching their target.

The approval process usually takes less than 24 hours. You will get an email from us that either approves your campaign for launch, asks you to modify your campaign and resubmit, or rejects your campaign outright.

About 60% of campaigns are approved on first submission. Once you’ve had one successfully funded campaign on Chuffed.org, we auto-approve all future campaigns.

 

For more inspiring environmental protection campaigns check out…

 

For more information and tips on how to crowdfunding…

If you’d like to read more about how to crowdfund, view our full guide here.

 

Or if you’re ready to draft your campaign, just head here

The Top 10 Animal Welfare Crowdfunding Campaigns

At Chuffed.org, we are privileged to see amazing campaigns launch every day. Our favourite thing is when campaigns take off to raise bucket loads for their cause or blitz through their fundraising targets.

Here are the Top 10 Animal Welfare Crowdfunding Campaigns – the ones that have raised the most money for their awesome projects and initiatives. 

 

1. Help Us to Help Them: Bring White Rhino to Altina – $197,503

In 2016, the staff at Altina Wildlife Park in the New South Wales Riverina (in Australia) took their passion for animal conservation one step further, deciding to import three Southern White Rhinos – Mtoto, Mango and Tatu – as part of a global breeding initiative.

They raised a substantial amount of cash – $197,503 – to move, feed and house the animals in the biggest animal campaign yet on Chuffed.org. 

Check out the campaign page here.

 

2. Duke’s Place Called Home – £90,360

Duke the Bullock, who was born a dwarf and sustained debilitating pelvic injuries while young, was rescued by a UK family and taken into their North Yorkshire home, along with countless other farm animals that were no longer seen as valuable by their former owners. Soon their kind-hearted endeavours became CALF Sanctuary and the family and animals all required a new home – one more suitable for Duke and his friends. 

When they asked, the community rallied and contributed a huge £90,360 for the purchase of a suitable property and the relocation of all the animals to their new home. 

Check out the campaign here

 

3. Raising the Roof – $162,458

Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary houses rescued farm animals on 153 peaceful acres in Victoria, in southeastern Australia.

Named after founder Pam Ahern’s first rescued pig – Edgar Alan Pig – the sanctuary’s first Chuffed.org campaign went bananas, raising $162,458 to build bigger and better lodgings for all its animals. This included goat mountains and jungle gyms, a purpose built duck pond complete with waterfall and a chicken barn called the ‘Barn Mahal’.    

Check out the campaign here

 

4. Create a Vegan – £82,096

What is Veganuary? The UK-based charity encourages people to try out a vegan diet in January (and at other times of the year too!) to reduce the number of animals in the farming system, our impact on the planet and improve our health all at the same time. They find a huge 67% of people who participate in January, stay vegan throughout the year.   

Their #CreateAVegan campaign raised £82,096 to spread the word about Veganuary via advertisements on public transport in four cities across three countries: London, Manchester, Boston and Sydney. 

Check out the campaign here

 

5. Project Piggy Paradise – $132,031

Another awesome campaign from our friends at Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary – this time to build a swanky new home for the sanctuary’s rescued pigs. One that not only provided shelter, shade, warmth, showers, veterinary treatment areas and the like, but could also inspire change in the way pigs are viewed in our wider society. 

Edgar’s raised $132,031 for the new facility which will allow the public – who can book in to visit – to see the unique and endearing personalities of pigs shine through, and come to a better understanding of these quirky creatures as much more than the before of a ham sandwich. 

Check out the campaign here

 

6.  $120,000 Kindness Challenge! – $128,172

Edgar’s Mission Farm Sanctuary were at it again! They asked supporters to help them raise $120,000 – which they outdid in a $128,172 raise. 

The appeal saw them able to buy essential to get through the winter including over 1 tonne of fruit and veg, 100 new tools, 50 fruit trees, over 500 bales of hay, 5 new shelters, solar panels and a 4WD Utility Vehicle.

Check out the campaign here

 

7. You Can Save The Lives Of Homeless Dogs! – $83,495

Stray and mistreated dogs are a sad reality on the streets of Thailand’s cities and in other parts of Southeast Asia and the US-based charity Soi Dog Foundation has been doing something about it since 2003.

In 2015, the Foundation raised $82,495 towards the cost of building an animal hospital at their shelter in Phuket.   

Check out the campaign here

 

8. Raise the Roof – £40,395

After the move to a property suitable to housing Duke the Bullock and his mates, Sharon and her family at CALF Sanctuary returned to Chuffed.org in 2016. They raised £40,395 to build a new barn to house the (increasingly social) Duke and: 5 cows, 5 pigs, 4 goats, 30+ sheep and lambs and a smattering of turkeys and chickens.   

Check out the campaign here

9. Build a New Home for Mountain Lions – $53,655

The Center for Animal Research and Education (CARE) in Texas provides a safe forever home to big cats and other exotic animals no matter what their history or needs. The CARE property is currently home to 50 animals including mountain lions, African lions, tigers, black and spotted leopards, bobcats, ring-tail lemurs, llamas, and a coati. 

When asked by the Dallas Zoo to take in two new mountain lions they stepped up and raised $53,655 to build them a proper home. 

Check out the campaign here

 

10. Help PetRescue Fix the Pound – $63,347

PetRescue partner with over 750 animal rescue groups and shelters all over Australia – helping them to re-home hundreds of thousands of unwanted, lost or abandoned pets each year. This campaign – which raised $63,347 – helped them to reach out and partner with more Council-run pounds, only 1% of whom were using PetRescue’s free rehoming services at the time, and where, sadly, the majority of unwanted animals are still put down.  

Check out the campaign here

 

But wait, there’s more!

If you’d like to check out all of the Animal campaigns we’ve hosted on Chuffed.org, you can search them all at our Discover page. 

*Campaigns on Chuffed.org raise money in their local currency. This list is ordered by campaign size in Australian dollars. 

Coffs Crew Legals Fundraiser by Ella

stop adani

“My name is Ella and I got involved with the Coffs Climate Action Group late last year because I was sick of talking and feeling saddened by the exploitation of the natural world by big corporations and mining companies and wanted to take action to stop it and raise awareness.

Not long after joining we road tripped up north to Bowen Queensland to the Front Line Action on Coal and me and 4 others, John, Liisa and Danny  locked ourselves to coal conveyor belt at the Adani owned  Abbot Point Coal Port to bring attention to the proposed mega mine and how devastating it will be to farmers and to indigenous people of the area who’s sacred lands will be destroyed. Also to spread awareness on the urgency of climate change and the affects burning fossil fuels is having on our climate. This non violent action was followed by an arrest and court case were we proceeded to get fines of $8000 each, a collective of $80000 for all 10 who locked on.

These are some of the biggest fines ever given to protesters in Australia and in comparison to the a fine of $12000 which was challenged in court, the given to multi millionaire Adani for polluting a nearby wetland, it’s obvious to see the corruption and injustice. Although the fines were huge, the importance of this issue and our shared responsibility to be caretakers of our only planet is much greater and taking action was very empowering.

Feeling more inspired than ever to make change!”
Ella Skerrett

To learn more about the Coffs Crew Legal Fundraiser to Stop the Adani port action, check out Ella’s crowdfunding campaign page below: