Advice for Successful Crowdfunding Campaigns

This episode of Main Street Business Insights features a panel interview recorded in front of a?live audience at the Maine Downtown Conference in November 2024?in Biddeford, Maine. Host Matt Wagner, Ph.D., explored the world of crowdfunding as a?financing alternative for small businesses, featuring crowdfunding expert Ross Chanowski, Founder of NuMarket, and two Maine entrepreneurs who successfully used community crowdfunding, John Stirratt, owner of Otyokwa, and Mary Chapman-Sissle, owner of Sissle &?Daughters. Below is an excerpt from their conversation.

Matt Wagner: I wonder if both of you could share any learnings along the way that you think are important for other business owners or your peers to know or advice that you would give if someone's thinking about crowdfunding.

Mary Chapman-Sissle: I learned that you have to be incredibly consistent with it. We could always tell when we were taking our feet off the gas a little bit, and we weren't talking with people about it enough, or we hadn't posted in a few days; we would see those drop-offs. So it really takes pretty constant engagement and not being afraid to choke people a little bit. You have a lot of people in your orbit who love you and want to support you, but we all have so many things going on. I've had other small business friends do GoFundMe's or Numarket campaigns, and I know it's on my to-do list every day. Oh, when I go home, and I sit down, I'm going to do this, but do I get to it most of the time? Not unless I do it in the moment that I'm thinking of it.

There were so many people who would come up to me in my shop and say, "Oh, I haven't done it yet. I'm going to, I'm meaning to." And just you have to advocate for yourself in those moments and say, "Open up your phone right now and do it." You can't be shy. You have to really be the salesperson for yourself. I remember when we had our first call with Isabelle, who managed our campaign for Numarket, and my husband used the word donation. She said, "You need to remove that from your vocabulary right now, making sure it's extremely clear that this is not a donation-based situation. The people are getting something back for this." It's just communication. Communication.

John Stirratt: Was the campaign open-ended? I mean, does it go on?

Ross Chanowski: They're month-long campaigns with an option to extend them for a couple of weeks. So, in your case, I think it ended up being six weeks.

Mary: Yeah, we were doing well and getting close. And so Ross and Isabelle said, "Okay, we could add on because we see the progress that you guys are making."

Ross: There was still some momentum.

Mary: Yeah, exactly. I think we were going to keep going, and we kind of reached a point where we're like, okay, we can't. It's a job, but it's so much better than the alternative.

Listen to the full episode here >