I’m Melissa and I’m an IndieGoGo campaign owner here on the blog to write a series of posts about my first crowdfunding experience. This includes everything that I do, questions that arise and areas I wasn’t expecting, from pre-launch preparation to what happens after my campaign is over. My case is a special case because I also just so happen to work here at IndieGoGo! This means that I have a bit of an “inside scoop” on the campaigning process and will pass along everything I learn to you through this series.

First of all, hello and Happy New Year!

 In the beginning of December of last year, it was the last day of my campaign and I still hadn’t reached my goal. I was close (about $75 short!), but I had to do something to make sure I’d get there. I decided to offer a limited-edition, additional incentive perk to the next few people who contributed to my campaign. With only 8 hours left, I posted to Facebook and Twitter again including an update to my campaign profile page:

The following two hours were very exciting! A few of my friends contributed, even more of them shared my posts with their friends meaning that a few of their friends contributed.  The final result was that I was able to reach my goal with 6 hours still to go! I was so excited I couldn’t help but cheer out loud at work. I updated Twitter, left a comment on my original Facebook post, and wrote an update on my campaign page:

By the time my campaign ended, I had reached $581 – that was $81 more than my targeted goal!  I then went shopping with @NBFowler the night before the race for some bulk items (you could bring groceries additional to the required shopping list from anywhere as long as you fulfilled the shopping list on race day).

For the first time in my life, I shopped for groceries based on weight alone – it was fun! I wound up spending about $350 of the money I had raised on IndieGoGo for food. When I got home from the store, I donated the rest of the money to the SMSW through their First Giving page.

The SMSW had another record year! We brought in 7,990 lbs. of food and we raised $10,298.51! You can check out the rest of the numbers and statistics on the SMSW blog!

Thank you so much to the organizers of the SMSW and everyone who helped make my campaign a success. 

Best of luck to everyone with an IndieGoGo campaign! If I can do it, you can too!

Here are a couple photos from race day! (Don't worry – I wore a helmet!)