Traditionally, individuals and company would rely on goodwill donors, charitable foundations, businesses, churches and government agencies to raise funds for their cause. There is also product fundraising which involves selling some type of gifts like cookies, handkerchiefs, and T-shirts with the organization’s logo on them.
These unconventional methods of raising capital can be quite harder than you think-particularly if very few people sympathize with your cause. There will be a truckload of paperwork to be done and a long, boring marathon of wooing potential investors. If you deal with intangible assets such as software, it could even be harder to convince banks to give you a sizable loan.
Are you tired of raising funds the traditional way? Do you find the reasons given by banks for a loan failure to be bogus and discriminating? Perhaps it’s time you try FundCru for a change.
FundCru is a blockchain-powered fundraising platform that was founded in 2015 with the aim of making fundraising super simple for company owners, philanthropists, and other merchants. It funds causes through both direct donations and e-commerce transactions. Unlike other fundraising platforms that support only one currency, Fundcru runs on both fiat and cryptocurrency money. This lowers the fees involved thus providing fundraisers with an opportunity to take home much of what was collected.
Through its business model and ability to leverage the blockchain technology, Fundcru provides fundraisers with additional ways to get more revenue; merchants will witness a ballooned market and outreach into new boundaries. Supporters, on the other hand, will be able to sponsor their causes and perhaps, profit from them as well.
What makes it so special?
FundCru sets itself apart through its key technological innovation that comprises the use of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain. The sales of vouchers, coupons, gift cards are all implemented and managed on this blockchain-whether they were bought with crypto money or fiat currency. Through the use of smart contracts, business individuals can go about their normal purchasing through the use of QR codes.
The storage and transfer of money is decentralized, and therefore, no one needs to worry about heavy reliance or interference from third-party agencies, including Fundcru itself. This ensures extraordinary levels of compliance, scalability, and security. There is literally no other fundraising platform out there with such convenient and functional features.
Fundcru’s blockchain-powered ability makes it serve a wider market and therefore guaranteed to maximize returns. What happens is this, the effectiveness of the blockchain technology attracts everyday fundraisers which in turn brings along supporters and merchants with the same cause. All the three groups (fundraisers, supporters, and merchants) create a profitable ecosystem where everyone’s needs are met.
If you hit the internet and look at how online fundraising is performing, you’ll be amazed. In 2016 alone, over $390 billion was collected for charitable organizations, while gift card sales totaled to $140 billion. GoFundMe, one of the largest online fundraising platform has raised over $4 billion in fundraising campaigns, and they are expected to hit 5-7 billion in the next three years. This means there is a lot of potential in online fundraising campaigns-especially when an agency adopts the cryptocurrency technology.
The Challenges and Limitations of other funding agencies and methods
As we said earlier on, traditional methods of raising money are slowly becoming ineffective-especially for smaller, startup ventures. People only listen to bigger corporations and fail to see potential in smaller, upcoming brands. Turning to friends for financial support can only work once; you go for help once again, and you may just lose many of them.
Fundly, GoFundMe, and other successful fundraising platforms are obviously doing well, but they still suffer from operational inefficiencies. What they do lack is the ability to connect fundraisers to more willing third party individuals and platforms out there. Other problems include:
Limited ability to forge partnerships between businesses and fundraising campaigns– talking directly to businesses is a prime way to get support for a cause. Any fundraiser who puts themselves (put simply, selling themselves) before business dynasties can find success pretty easily. Unfortunately, the process of persuading business empires to believe in your dream usually involves a lot of costs that many fundraising agencies don’t want to go through.
Limited causes for customers to back– one thing you need to know is that businesses have a number of fundraisers to support at any given time. This means they may prefer to back up some else’s cause if they don’t believe in yours. Effective campaigning, therefore, needs to include a wide range of causes and a bit more products to sell to increase the chances of being picked up.
Sizable agency fee– most fundraising agencies charge a significant fee (usually 5-10%) of the total funds raised-which is usually a turn off for most fundraising campaigns. Donations need to go directly to the cause with minimal to no transfer fees needed. This is one area where FundCru really outshines most fundraising platforms. With them, you get much of what was raised.
Supporting only fiat currency-Fiat currency has had its fair share of dominating the capital market. Cryptocurrency is the new wave-it’s the future we’ve been waiting for. As we speak, many bigger firms like Microsoft are already accepting payments in the form of crypto coins. Unfortunately, most fundraising agencies don’t support this disruptive technology; only Fundcru does.
The problem of customer acquisition and retention
FundCru goes beyond helping you find a customer; it helps you retain them as well. Generally, most businesses lower the price of their goods to lure new clients with the hope that as their client base surges, they will be able to make countless sales that will help them recoup their losses. Unfortunately, most startups need money so you don’t expect them to discount their products in the first place. Even if they manage to lower their prices and get new customers, as soon as their prices normalize, some clients (who came courtesy of lower prices) will flee.
Fundcru, on the other hand, is effective in ensuring you get to keep your clients. How do they do this? By establishing a connection between businesses and customers which is purely based on shared values and backing up causes. It’s high time you shift to this modern day fundraising method to experience a smooth capital collection process.