Good Monday Morning!
A few days ago, Cohere Bandwidth launched a fundraising campaign on Community Funded, a local crowdfunding platform. Our project is just one of a handful that are hoping to raise at least $5,000 through the My5 campaign.
Here’s the catch (aka opportunity): before we can actually begin collecting contributions, we have to gather endorsements. It’s kind of like proving that we have the chops to go far in the fundraising round. You have to have at least 50 endorsements to proceed to the funding stage, and the project that gathers the MOST endorsements gets a special cash prize from Community Funded before the crowdfunding even begins.
Alright, here’s where we stand:
August 1: Cohere Bandwidth campaign launches, begins collecting endorsements.
August 1: You, our awesome community of supporters around the world totally crushes it! Cohere Bandwidth gets 54 endorsements in the first 12 hours the campaign is live!!!
August 5: WE STILL NEED YOUR HELP! Every extra endorsement we get from now until August 14th puts us closer and closer to securing the additional $2,000 prize.
(Let’s pause for just a moment and reflect on exactly WHY we were so successful so quickly:
- We’ve been building a community of friends and supporters in Fort Collins for over three years. My main goal, when I had the idea to start a coworking space back then was to build a community around independence, entrepreneurship, and collaboration. We started in a lobby, sharing coffee and power cords, but we had a blast! I took the time to let the community tell me what it needed, rather than the other way around. From the beginning Cohere members have had a strong desire to support and help each other, whether work related or not. So, when it comes time to mobilize support for something like Cohere Bandwidth, all we had to do was ask.
- We know how to use the interwebs. Social media is INTEGRAL to crowdfunding success. You have to know the right words to say, and where to say them. Not everyone’s on Facebook. Not everyone’s on Twitter. It has to be a multipronged approach, and it has to be genuine (that means lots of shares and request from someone else OTHER than me!), telling the real story of why the project is important.
- We made it easy. Any time we asked for endorsements, we kept it short and sweet, and explained what people needed to do once they clicked through to the crowdfunding site. That way, they knew they would have to log in, and they knew what button to look for to endorse us.
Here are some examples of how we mobilized our community to support us through endorsements:
On the Cohere Facebook Page –
Clickity click click please! We’re trying to get 100 endorsements for our crowdfunding project to get Cohere Bandwidth off the ground officially. Can you take 3 minutes to help us out?
We only need 16 more votes to get to the funding round! Can we do it in ONE DAY?! I think we can. Be sure to either create an account with Community funded or LOG IN so your endorsement counts!
7 endorsements away from getting to the funding round for “coworking for bands.” Yeah, you like it and you know it. So go endorse us (but create your account or login first).
On Angel’s Personal Facebook Page –
Oh pretty please endorse our crowdfunding campaign for Cohere Bandwidth: Shared Rehearsal Space for Musicians in Fort Collins. We need at least 50 votes but our goal is 100 so we can get a cash prize to contribute towards the project. You have to create an account but can do so by just clicking the Sign in with Facebook button. Hooray!
On Julie’s Personal Facebook Page –
I had breakfast with Alana Rolfe today, who told me she can’t stand up to play her viola at Stella Luce practice because the ceiling is too low. I think that sucks, and am working with some people to find a fix for such ridiculousness for musicians in our community. We could use your help. If you could take a sec to give us your vote for our shared rehearsal space project, we’ll be on our way to making things better.
And of course, we live-tweeted the entire thing from the @CohereLLC handle:
- We’re only 14 votes away from getting to the funding round for Cohere Bandwidth:shared rehearsal space for musicians.
- now we only need 13 more endorsements to get to funding 🙂
- It’s FIVE now. FIVE! I’m literally atwitter right now.
- And people wonder how the long process (of community building) actually works. Psshhh.
- If you’re scrolling twitter right now you have time to be the last 3 endorsements we need.
- It happened. It really happened. We got to our goal of 50 endorsements for Cohere Bandwidth in under 12 hours. You all rock.
Anyway, now that we’ve spilled our guts about the campaign, WE NEED YOU TO KEEP THE AWESOME FLOWING. We want that $2,000 so bad we can taste it. It will be a most welcome chunk of change and the first resources we really had to take Cohere Bandwidth off the drawing board and into reality.
This is basically a contest about who has the best and most supportive community. We know you’re the best, all you have to do is prove it!!
WE need as many endorsements as possible between now and August 14th to make sure we get the top spot and $2,000 cash prize towards our rehearsal space project. To show your support, click this link, then login with Facebook and click Endorse This Project (it’s a big green button). Easy! http://communityfunded.com/projects/angel/shared-rehearsal-space-for-musicians/