Crowdfunding, a 20th century buzzword coined by Kickstarter, where Adam Smith’s invisible hand comes into play and power is given to the people to monetarily back projects or ideas they believe in.
At Crowdfund Her Live! (an event by Woomentum), one organiser took crowdfunding offline into spatial reality. Three successful women entrepreneurs took to the panel as inspiring examples of women in action, followed by four aspiring ladies whom rallied the crowd with passionate pitches along three trajectories – social, creative, and technology.
There were three atypical facets about Crowdfund Her Live!, that also makes for good takeaways on organising events.
1. Feature female speakers, pretty please
Strangely enough, panelists in business-related events tend to be male-dominated despite the rise of female C-Suite executives and entrepreneurs. Notwithstanding the fact that Crowdfund Her Live! is an event in support of women entrepreneurs, it’s a rare but encouraging sight to behold an all female cast on the panel. Giving women opportunities to speak up could inspire even more to venture out and judging from Woomentum’s ability to do so, this is possible.
2. Using events to engage with your community
Meeting a person face-to-face in place of a virtual persona takes emotional connection and empathy to the next level. Woomentum understands this – though an online crowdsourcing platform, they also created an offline avenue for their community to engage, participate, and gain clarity on projects with each other. Such offline communities amplify a sense of reality, belonging and camaraderie. Consider organising an event for your community and discover the difference a personal touch can make!
3. Be innovative with online tools
At Crowdfund Her Live!, project pitches were literally crowdfunded live by the attendees present! How, you ask? An event page was created on Peatix for the audience to immediately purchase tickets tied to backing a specific project upon hearing the pitch. A total of $1260 was raised in two hours – the power of live crowdfunding, and at a lower platform fee too in comparison to traditional crowdfunding sites. This would mean more of the money went into funding the projects! Crowdfunding (or, fundraising) – now that’s certainly one way you could use a ticketing platform.
