By the simple act of hitting the request button, suddenly your project idea is real, has form, and has gone off into the internet tubes to be assessed by a team of specially trained mice. Twisted, turned, hummed and haaaa-ed over, tapped, shaken, and rolled out on the floor for a better look.
Pushing that button is starting your project on the path to life, and we have the great joy of receiving it. Sadly we haven’t trained the mice well enough to oversee the process, so it falls mostly to yours truly (Tash) to check it out.
So what happens when you hit the button? You’ve filled out all the fields, told us your life story, and now it disappears into the darkness. You wait with great anticipation, refreshing your inbox every five minutes to see if we’ve replied.
Well, here’s how it goes
- You request your campaign idea, complete with story, people, reward ideas and funding goal.
- It pings an alert in my inbox, waiting patiently for my attention. Once (or sometimes twice) per work day, I open the folder which holds all the project notifications.
- I click through to see what you’ve sent me. At this point all I know is your title, so my anticipation is based solely on your title, so capturing my interest at this point is a sign of a great project. Think of me as the average pledger who doesn’t know you — and write your title with the aim of getting me interested straight away.
- I read over what you’ve sent. The key things I look for are: specific mention of what your project is about and how you’re going to achieve it, how much money you’re after and what you’re going to spend it on.
- I hit ‘approve’ if you have all of those things covered, if not, I’ll probably email you to check any details that aren’t clear.
- If the project primarily reads as if the funding is for charitable purposes, or the project is such there are no possible rewards to be offered, I’ll let you know and point in the right direction to get some assistance.
- Once I’ve hit ‘approve’, I’ll follow up with an email. It’s full of super useful information about filling in the rest of your project details. It may look long and daunting, but it’s definitely worth reading.
- Hooray! You can now log in, go to your project and edit ALL THE THINGS.
- You push the final magical ‘submit’ button.
- Again, a sparkly email arrives in the mailbox, and I’ll check in on what you’ve done. I’ll make sure you have: a video or main image, a funding goal, a deadline, a solid description and rewards.
- If any of those key items are missing, or lacking detail, or otherwise a bit wonky, I’ll get in touch with suggestions to straighten them out. You make the edits and submit again.
- If everything is there and I think you’re on the right track, I hit the final button: PUBLISH! Hooray! And now your project will be live on the site, ready for people to get pledging.
Pro tips
If you want to make the mice super happy, then pay heed to these pro tips.
- Allow at least 5 working days for publishing from when you send the initial pitch through. Definitely tell people you are going to run a campaign, build the anticipation so when you can share a direct link everyone is ready to go.
- Have all the information required before you create the project. It’ll make the process much faster and get your project live sooner, rather than it percolating in the background as a half-filled-in idea.
- Ask us questions! Not sure about your pitch, your reward ideas or need to check in about the timeframes? We’re always ready and willing with advice – remember this is what we love and do every day!
