We created a short guide which has some great tips on how to get your campaign attractive to potential donors based on working with hundreds of individuals and organizations in helping them raise million of dollars. Click the button below to open the guide.

Next to each element of your campaign page, you will find a button that will open a tip for that element:

Each tip is specific for that element and would provide you with ideas and examples.

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Jewcer is a nonprofit organization with one mission: helping you use crowdfunding to engage with the community. Unlike other platforms you might have heard (or even used), we spend most of our time working with individuals and organizations to help them use crowdfunding to strengthen our community and Israel.

If you need help, have a question or just want to get hold of us, the best way is to email us to help@jewcer.com. We ask you that you first check out our Help Desk or our FAQ page as your question might have an answer there already.

Would you like a crowdfunding expert to go over your campaign and send you specific suggestions? Our experts love doing that!

When you finished preparing all the required elements for your campaign page, let us know (before you launch your campaign), and one of our experts would be happy to go over your page and send you specific notes on how to make it even better. Be sure to read our short (and amazing) guide and our Help Desk section “Building an awesome campaign page” before you ask for our experts to go over your page. When you are ready, please email us to help@jewcer.com, let us know you are asking for an expert to go over your campaign and be sure to provide the link to your campaign. You can get the link by pressing the “Preview” button at the bottom of the editing section of your campaign and copying the link. The link will look like www.jewcer.org/project/______ (where you choose the URL ending in one of the parts of your campaign editing).

A great way to learn about what you should have in your campaign page is to check out other campaigns on Jewcer. Browsing is very simple! Head out to our browsing page and click the category you wish to browse. You might also want to check out the successful list.

When browsing around and choosing a campaign, think about what got you to click on one campaign page and not another (Title? Image? tagline?). When looking at a campaign, try to see if you understand what they are raising money for. Do you feel anything is missing? Would you donate to this cause? How would you make their campaign better? These questions could help you figure out how to describe your cause and build your campaign page.

Think back about memorable crowdfunding campaigns you saw or even donated to. Did they have a pitch video? Most likely, yes.

The fact is that campaigns that have a pitch video, raise, on average, more than trice the amount that campaigns that do not have a pitch video. If you are thinking of raising more than $5,000, we highly recommend that you have a pitch video on your campaign page.

The good news is that it is not that difficult to create a good pitch video!

We created a short and simple tutorial here that can help you create a good and effective pitch video for your campaign page. However, If you are looking for professional help in creating your pitch video, please let us know by emailing us to help@jewcer.com and we can connect you with people that have helped other campaigns.

Choosing your campaign goal amount is not a simple task, but we are here to make sure you have the complete picture of what would make you successful.

Most people who run a crowdfunding campaign for the first time think that the goal amount depends mostly on the idea or cause behind behind the campaign. That is only partially true, in reality, the amount you raise depends far more on your actions than on the idea. Part of what we provide is the strategy behind your campaign so that you would raise more money, however, you are the one that needs to execute it.

The factors you should consider in choosing your goal amount:

• The amount you actually need and the amount that makes sense. For example, if you are looking to publish a music CD, you probably need around $10,000. If you set the goal at $50,000 for example, it would not make sense to people that visit it.
• The amount of time you can spend on the campaign. Crowdfunding requires time or everyone would be doing it. If you run your campaign well and follow our advice, you will find that it is about $200-$300 per hour which is a great return on your time.
• The initial circle of funders you can have. We recommend to start every campaign by contacting people personally and avoid social media (or newsletter lists). You should reach about 1/5 of your goal from this circle of friends and family. You could sit down and estimate how much money you can raise from this list (as you know them and you should make the list anyways). That can also give you an indication of the final goal amount you should aim for.
• Your current reach. After you contact all your personal contacts, it is time to use social media and any email lists you can use. We estimate that about 2%-5% of those people typically contribute and the average amount they contribute is $35.
• Influencers that join your cause. Influencers are people in the community who have a large reach (e.g. many friends on facebook, followers on twitter, or blog readers). If you know some that are willing to support your cause by sharing it, you can count that as your reach in the calculation above.

Over the years, we have developed a calculator that can help you get started on estimating the right amount for you, you can find it here. Our experts are happy to discuss with you all aspects of your campaign and figure out with you what amount you should put in your campaign page. Do not hesitate and contact us.

You are working very hard to create a campaign page that will get people to donate to your cause. We highly recommend that you get familiar with the process of donating on Jewcer. There is no better way than to do it yourself. Pick any campaign and donate any amount. Go through the whole process so that you know what you are asking others to do.

Some campaigns are done by professional copywriters and graphic designers. If you are interested in getting connected with such professionals, we would be very happy to get you in touch with ones that have been proven to provide excellent service. Examples of camapigns who used professional copywriting and design, you can see here, here and here. Please contact us and let us know and we would put you in touch with such professionals who would help you create an engaging campaign page.

You know the phrase “no one likes to be the first one on a dance floor”? Same applies to crowdfunding. Often people think that crowdfunding campaign succeed by building a page and then posting it to social network (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), but the truth is that most campaigns you might have seen and seem successful, have been campaigning long before you saw them.

The success of most campaigns can be predicted by the way they are launched and gain early momentum. While you are building your campaign page, you should start creating the most important list for your campaign: Your Launch List. You should start writing down a list of people that you know and they know you (personally) whom you think would have a high chance of donating to your campaign. You should get at least 100 people on this list (the more, the better). The list should have their name, email address (or phone number) and how much do you think they would donate.

If you are part of a team that is raising money for your cause, you already have more pairs of eyes checking your campaign. However, in any case, whether you are running this campaign on your own or part of a team, it is always good to get some feedback from people that you are most likely going to ask to support it when you get started, in other words, close friends and family.

Send your campaign link (here is how to get it) when you feel it is ready for feedback. We suggest that you spend a considerable amount of time on your campaign page before showing it to people. Unless they are very close friends or family, you do not want to annoy people by asking their feedback more than once. Then, when you are ready, send them the link and ask for their honest opinion. Make them feel you are giving them a way to be part of the creation here and that the success of your campaign is their success.

Some questions you may want to ask your friends to get feedback for your campaign page:

• Is the cause clear and described well?
• Do you feel I made it clear what I need the money for and how it will be used?
• Is the page too long/short?
• Are the images used in the description in the right places and help the story?
• How do you feel about the contribution levels? Do you feel they are making you feel part of the cause?

This is a great opportunity for you to give people the feeling they are part of what you are doing. That said, it is important to know these are just opinions. Avoid getting in a “whirlpool” of making tiny changes just because someone gives you their opinion.

As mentioned above, you are (hopefully) going to contact more than 100 people directly and personally (in other words, one message per person – no mass distribution). You can prepare the part of the messages that describes your cause in advance. We recommend that each message starts with something personal (for example, “Hi Joe, how was your trip to Israel? I would love to hear all about it”). Then, you can paste a pre-written message about your cause. Now is the time to prepare it!

Your greatest ambassadors right now are your donors. Be sure to:

• deliver on your promises (if you promised anything as part of their support).
• thank them often and make them know you appreciate their support.
• keep them “in the loop” about your progress, make them feel your success is theirs as well.
• remind them to tell others about your cause.

Notice that some of these actions are about “asking” and some are about “giving”. Be sure to not only keep asking your donors for more and more or they will walk away. On the other hand, if you truly behave as if you and your supporters are doing this, they will keep talking about. We often see supporters that come back at the end of the campaign and donate again (we recommend that you do not ask them directly to do that).

Social networks are a great way to reach people and get them to hear about your cause, come to your campaign page and donate. However, it is important to use them correctly so that you get the most out of your efforts and time.

The first important lesson should already be clear to you (if you read everything before this section): Do not use social networks until you already have initial support by people that you know through direct and private communication. You want to use social networks to share a campaign page that seems like a “moving train”, making people want to “jump” on it.

Using personal pages and organization’s pages

Aside from using social networks personal and organization’s pages to reach people, it is important to use them in order to show that you are serious about this initiative and put yourself (or the organization) “face” on the campaign. It would look suspicious if you would see a campaign by someone that is not willing to post about it on their own account (of course, unless you are told it is in a “soft launch”).

Using Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a great way to find people that care about common topics and promote your cause to them. A few recommendations:

• Be sure that you know the difference between a Facebook page and a group. You want groups, not pages. Use facebook’s search to filter out only groups.
• Don’t spam. Start a conversation, get involved, no one likes spammers and you would not get much attention. Groups can be very engaging and you would get a lot of traffic if you use them well.
• Pay attention to the rules of the group set by the admin.

More than 2,000 people visit the Jewcer platform on a daily basis. Many of these people browse around and visit more than one campaign page. We often notice people who would support one campaign, then browse around and support another, or, come to our platform, browse around and support a campaign that was not the first one they looked at.

Much like on google search results, the position of your campaign mentioning on our platform will determine the amount of traffic you would receive. We apply a very simple principle:

The more active your campaign is, the more visible it would be to people on our platform.

In other words, the more activity in your campaign (visitors from outside, donations and amount of money that is donated), the more “upfront” the campaign would be to people who just browse around the platform. The opposite is also true. If you do not actively campaign and get people to hear about your campaign, less and less people who browse our platform would come across your campaign. This is a principle all platforms use as we cannot show all campaigns to all visitors. In practice, here is how it works:

• Your campaign must raise at least $100 in the past 7 days in order for the campaign to be “browsable”. In other words, if you raise less than $100 in a period of 7 days, on the 8th day, your campaign page will not be publicly shown on the platform and will only be accessible directly. If you want to read more about this and why we do it, please see this help article.
• Our “trending” section in the platform (that many people visit) will order campaigns by the number of visitors they get and the amount of money they have raised in the past 7 days.
• Every category on our platform shows first the open campaigns and orders them by their activity.

There are several ways that your campaign can be promoted by Jewcer to help you get more people to see your campaign:

• Have your campaign on Jewcer’s homepage (more than 2,000 people visit Jewcer daily with a majority of them going through the homepage in their browsing).
• Have your campaign mentioned in our periodic newsletter (we send out a newsletter 2-3 times a month with over 22,000 subscribers and very high open rate).
• Have your campaign posted on Jewcer’s facebook and twitter accounts and our partners’ pages (we reach over 100,000 people weekly through our social media and with our partners who share our campaigns)

When making your media list, these are the four things to look for:

Relevance – will their readers LOVE your cause?
Readership – how much traffic does their site / page get?
Relationships – do you know at least one person who can make a strong introduction?
Reach – do they promote causes? or do they expect you to bring traffic to their posts?

People often think that crowdfunding is just a variation on asking (or begging) for money. Yes, some organizations might use this “tone” but our mission is to teach you that,

Crowdfunding is not asking for money.
Crowdfunding is giving people an opportunity to be part of something amazing.

In other words, do not treat your campaign as a “begging for money campaign” but rather understand (and accept) that you are doing something amazing here and that this campaign is an opportunity for others to take a real part in making it happen. You should apply this principle in every corner of your campaign, from the title and your description, to your contribution levels and the video pitch. Think of different ways to give your donors a true sense of ownership and connection to the effect that you are looking to cause. This will translate into greater financial support and people talking about your cause.

Chef’s don’t prepare meals like you and me. They don’t start 15-60 minutes before dinner. Instead, they prep everything in advance (sometimes days before), so they can just heat the food and make it look nice when it’s time to eat. This is how you should treat your campaign so that you can spend your time during the campaign on engagement and getting people excited to talk about your cause. For example, the tutorial below will advise you on messaging different groups of people at certain times. You can prepare all those lists and even the messages so that you could just click “send” when the right time comes. Talking to campaign organizers that successfully raised the money they needed tell us this was a game changer for them.

Crowdfunding is more of a methodology than a platform. Jewcer is a platform that helps you apply the principles of crowdfunding, however, no crowdfunding platform has all the tools you need for a successful campaign (a simple example is email. You should and probably are using some email tool outside of your crowdfunding campaign). A successful crowdfunding campaign requires you to do many more tasks than sending emails and we recommend that you make sure that you have the right tools of the the tasks involved in crowdfunding. We included a list at the end of this tutorial of tools we recommend, however, you might like or know others.

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. In the case of running a crowdfunding campaign, unexperienced people report back that “80% of the money they raised, came from 20% of the actions they did”. A good application of this principle is to identify the actions that will get you the most outcome and not waste your time on things that do not bring you results. This is big part of the mission of Jewcer and the reason for our success.

An example of a common mistakes people make is to spend too much time perfecting every sentence in their campaign description rather than work on their lists of people that they will contact (see “silent launch” section below). You should definitely spend a considerable time and thought on how to describe your campaign, however, we often encounter campaign organizers that then spend weeks (sometimes months) on making tiny changes that will now make no difference in the outcome of their campaign.