Last week, crowdfunding platform The Spark Project announced a call for applications to Spark Accelerator, a bootcamp and mentorship program for teams looking to finance their purpose-driven projects through crowdfunding.
This year’s iteration of the Spark Accelerator program, following their inaugural 2019 cohort, will support ten projects across:
- Social Enterprise
- Media and Publishing
- Design and Innovation
- Heritage and Culture
- Arts, Music, and Film
- Local Small Businesses
- Food and Beverage
- and Community and Causes
Teams selected to join this limited cohort will receive expert mentorship on crafting the strategies necessary to stage a successful crowdfunding campaign—a practice that Patch Dulay, founder and CEO of The Spark Project, has spent nearly a decade championing.
Patch says this year’s cohort will be benefiting from his team’s nine years of crowdfunding and community-building experience in the Philippines and beyond. Since it launched in February 2013, The Spark Project has helped raise over P21 million across 122 projects, with 55% of them successfully reaching their funding goals. The group has also helped establish incubator programs for institutions like the Hub for Innovation For Inclusion at De La Salle-College of Saint Benilde. Patch himself currently serves as the crowdfunding and eCommerce consultant for Youth Co:Lab, the largest youth social entrepreneurship network in the Asia-Pacific region.
According to Patch, there are three ingredients to a successful crowdfunding campaign. The first is a concrete offering. “It has to have at least a working prototype,” said Patch. “You can’t just be crowdfunding an idea. You must have put in some legwork already, such that by the time you crowdfund, you’re already on the tipping point of making your project a reality.”
The second is a willingness to put in the hard work needed to manage a campaign. “Crowdfunding isn’t magic funding,” said Patch. “A lot of people think it’s easy money. But the ‘crowd’ in ‘crowdfunding’ is the operative word that describes this process.” Teams need to understand that running a crowdfunding campaign entails significant time and resources spent on engaging with a community throughout, and beyond, the campaign itself.
Third, crowdfunding should be more than simply fundraising. Patch invites teams exploring crowdfunding to look at the two months they will likely spend managing their campaigns as part of their marketing strategies as well. “While raising funds is definitely the end goal here, the benefits go well beyond just money,” he said. “To be honest, it takes more work to engage with the crowd than it does to engage with a single VC. But while you’ll probably gain less money from the crowd than from the VC, what you also get is a community gathered around your project. If you look at it as a brand-building or community-building activity, then the benefits far offset the extra work.”
The Spark Project will be accepting applications for projects that have a track record of at least one year, are championing a social purpose, and are able to publish or launch between April to June this year. Deadline for submissions is March 11, with the cohort bootcamp kicking off on March 28.