With crowdfunding, sports teams and schools face specific challenges that might not be an issue with other crowdfunding campaigns. 

When anyone asks for financial support, potential donors might think:

• Someone else will donate.
• Why should I care?
• Don't they already have enough money?

If you consider a crowdfunding campaign for a medical emergency, like those seen on GoFundMe, the three objections above don't really apply because the donor is aware of an essential need. However, when raising money for a high school soccer team, they ALWAYS come into question.

As a response to these challenges, FanAngel has specifically designed solutions that battle these objections in what we call Contextualized Crowdfunding. 

Athlete Profiles & Fundraising Goals

In team fundraising, most donors are really giving because of an individual athlete. Thus, focusing on that athlete's needs and goals is paramount to making the donor feel like their donation means something.  

Uploading a headshot and giving each athlete (or student) an individual fundraising goal gives context for the donation. We see increases in donations as much as 100% over campaigns that don't use individual goals and headshots.

Creating individual athlete/student goals is EXTREMELY easy. It takes each family 10-15 minutes to create an account and begin sharing a goal via email, text and social media.

Performance Pledging

While most teams choose to do a basic ‘Ask Campaign,' FanAngel also encourages teams to ask for pledges based on performance, either in-game or otherwise. For example, a volleyball player might ask for donations for every spike in a game. This ‘gamifies’ and energizes the fundraising efforts. Alternatively, a Lift-a-Thon fundraiser focuses on individual athlete performance and motivates them towards real world success. Performance pledges are especially successful because the athletes want to share their goals, success, and story.

A spin on this type of fundraising is the Social Good campaign, where students ask for pledges based on non-sport tasks, such as serving meals at a soup kitchen or picking up trash at the park. 

Individualized & Trackable Sharing

When a family or athlete shares a campaign through email, text, and social media, donors receive a personalized message with the athlete’s profile photo. This simple addition increases clicks, and donations rates rise dramatically.

FanAngel also includes the tracking of sends, opens, clicks, and donations on an individual basis. This allows teams and schools to include incentives to further motivate sharing. For example, every student that shares the campaign with 20 email addresses gets a team t-shirt, or the athlete that raises the most money gets a pair of Beats Headphones. 

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Context Matters

If you imagine your potential donors seeing personalized goals and posts like the ones discussed, you have already overcome the obstacle. Donors care because they know you, they see how far you have to go, and their impact is clear.