Crowdfunder | Stories

A complete guide to crowdfunding for musicians

Rachel — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 13:46:30 +0100

How to plan, build and run your music crowdfunding project

The music industry has always asked independent artists to do more with less. Record deals that once covered recording, distribution and promotion are rarer and more conditional than they’ve ever been. Streaming pays fractions of pennies. Touring costs more than it returns for most artists at the early and mid stages of a career.

Crowdfunding doesn’t fix any of that. What it does is give you a direct line to the people who care about what you make, and a way to fund your work on your own terms, without giving up creative control, ownership or the relationship with your audience.

This guide is about doing it well. Not just setting up a campaign page, but understanding how to plan, build and run something that actually works — from defining your goal and designing rewards through to keeping your crowd engaged long after the campaign ends.

Music and Crowdfunder: the numbers

Total raised by music projects on Crowdfunder: £34,262,508
Number of music campaigns run: 8,779
Average raised per music campaign: £5,464
Largest single music campaign: Own our venues – £2,600,552

Musicians have used Crowdfunder to fund everything from debut EPs and vinyl pressings to grassroots music venues and community orchestras. Sister Midnight, a grassroots music venue in London, raised £107,030 from supporters to secure their future. Global Grooves, a community music organisation, raised £203,851 to keep their work going. At the other end of the scale, independent artists regularly raise £5,000–£25,000 to fund albums, EPs and tours on their own terms.

Why crowdfund?

Crowdfunding is more than a fundraising mechanism. When you run a campaign, you retain creative control and full ownership of your music — no commissioners, no label gatekeepers, no one else’s vision to accommodate. The tradeoff is that you carry the full weight of the campaign yourself: the planning, the promotion, the communication, the follow-through.

The other thing worth understanding early is that your crowd — the people who back your campaign — are an asset that lasts well beyond any single project. Musicians who manage their backers well find they become repeat supporters, advocates, and the core of future audiences. The campaign funds the album or the tour; the crowd is what you build for the long term.

Planning your campaign

Most campaign failures are planning failures. The project idea is rarely the problem — the problem is launching without the right foundations in place.

Define exactly what you’re raising for

Be specific. “Recording costs” is not specific. A list that breaks down studio time, mixing, mastering, pressing costs and contingency is specific — and it matters, because backers want to know what their money is doing.

Common music campaign goals include recording and producing an album or EP, manufacturing physical formats (vinyl, CDs, cassettes), funding a tour, producing a music video, supporting a residency or commissioned project, or covering venue and rehearsal space costs.

Many musicians now fund in phases rather than all at once — a campaign for recording, then a separate one for pressing and distribution. This keeps individual targets realistic and lets your crowd participate in multiple chapters of the story.

Work out your target honestly

Calculate your actual costs, including the ones easy to overlook: instrument hire, session musicians, transport, insurance, hard drives, packaging design, and postage for physical rewards. Build in a contingency of around 10–15%.

Choose your funding type

All or nothing means you only receive funds if you hit your target — helpful for when you need a minimum budget to execute your plan. Keep what you raise means you receive all pledges even if you fall short, which works well when every pound genuinely helps regardless of the total.

Set your timeline

A typical campaign runs for four to six weeks. Much longer and it loses focus; much shorter and you don’t have time to build momentum. Map your campaign period against any fixed dates — recording sessions already booked, release windows, tour starts — and work backwards from those to set your launch date.

One clear rule: don’t launch before you’re ready. A campaign that goes live before the page is finished, before the pitch video is done, before early backers have been lined up, is already behind.

Line up early support

Having 10–20% of your target already pledged before you go public is one of the most commonly underestimated parts of the process. New visitors to a campaign page make quick judgments based on social proof. A campaign that has raised £2,000 in its first two days looks credible and alive. A campaign sitting at £0 after a week looks like something is wrong, even if it isn’t.

Before launch, get commitments from people you know: friends, collaborators, existing fans, family. Ask them to pledge in the first 48 hours, and ask them to share it with two or three people who might care.

The Hill — a folk musician’s Highland landscape album project — launched their Crowdfunder after already securing £8,500 from Creative Scotland as a matched contribution. By the time the campaign went public, 34% of the target was already in place. The campaign went on to raise £25,780 in total. Starting with secured funding — whether from a match funder, a trust, or committed early backers — changes the psychology of every person who sees your campaign afterwards.

Develop your story

Music campaigns succeed when they feel honest, transparent and emotionally compelling. Talk about who you are as an artist, why this project matters now, and what supporters are making possible by backing it.

Building a project page that converts

Your project page is doing several jobs at once: it’s your pitch, your storefront and your storytelling medium. Visitors will skim it on mobile in seconds before deciding whether to back or leave.

The top section has to work immediately

The title, main image and opening sentences need to land before anyone scrolls. Be clear about what you’re doing, why it matters right now, and what supporters are making possible.

Avoid vague openers like “We’re a band trying to make our dreams come true.” Try instead: “We’re pressing our debut vinyl, 500 copies of the record we’ve spent three years making. Help us get it into people’s hands.”

Create a short pitch video

As a musician, video is your home territory. A pitch video doesn’t need to be polished — authenticity matters more than production quality. Keep it under three minutes. Show your face, share your story, play something if it makes sense, and end with a direct ask. Subtitle it — a large proportion of mobile video is watched on mute.

Use images and scannable copy

Include rehearsal shots, gig photos, artwork and tracklists. Break your copy into clear sections: what you’re creating, how the money will be used, and who you are. Short paragraphs over long ones. Headers help people find their way around.

Designing rewards that fans actually want

Rewards are where a lot of campaigns get tripped up — either by over-promising things that are expensive or time-consuming to fulfil, or by offering things nobody actually wants.

The principle to hold onto: money-can’t-buy, low-cost rewards outperform generic merchandise almost every time. A signed test pressing, an invitation to a private listening session, a video call where you play something new — these cost you very little but feel genuinely special to someone who cares about your music.

Physical rewards carry hidden costs. Packing and posting 200 CDs takes more time and money than most people anticipate when they’re setting up reward tiers. Limit physical items to higher tiers where the per-unit economics make more sense, and at the lower end, lean into digital and experience-based rewards.

Benedict Please, a pianist and composer, raised £20,124 for his debut piano album using a clear reward ladder — early digital access at the lower end, signed physical copies in the middle, and a private house concert for superfan backers at the top. Simple, scalable, no fulfilment nightmares.

A straightforward reward ladder might look like this:

£5–£15: digital perks — thank you credits, behind-the-scenes updates, early demos
£20–£40: music and merch — early downloads, signed CDs, limited edition items
£50–£100: experiences — tickets to launch shows, online listening parties
£250+: superfan rewards — signed instruments, house concerts, studio visits

Prize draws for musicians

Prize draws are one of the most underused tools available to independent musicians and worth understanding properly.

Supporters buy entries — typically for a small amount like £5 — for a chance to win something special. The entry cost is low enough to attract a wide audience, including people who wouldn’t pledge at a normal reward tier. The prize needs to be genuinely desirable: not generic merchandise, but something with real scarcity or personal value.

Prize draws work best when the prize is genuinely exciting and hard to replicate, the entry cost is low enough to be impulse-friendly, you can promote through partners, venues or communities beyond your existing audience, and the closing deadline is clear and creates urgency.

Nordoff and Robbins ran a prize draw offering a limited edition guitar signed by Mark Knopfler, raising £28,035 for the music therapy charity. The prize was specific, scarce and genuinely tied to the artist — the kind of thing a fan couldn’t buy anywhere else.

One more example: a prize draw run to win a drumskin signed by Frank Turner at his 3,000th show, run in support of Help Musicians, attracted supporters well beyond Turner’s immediate fanbase. The combination of a meaningful prize, low entry cost and a clear cause made it shareable in a way a standard campaign wouldn’t have been.

Match funding

Match funding means a fund partner adds money to your campaign on top of what your crowd raises. If your project qualifies, every pound your supporters contribute may be matched, significantly increasing what you end up with.

Available match funding pots change over time and are tied to specific themes: arts and culture, community wellbeing, education, climate and more. Music projects — especially those with a community, youth, health or social impact dimension — regularly qualify. The key is to check what funds are currently live and whether your project fits their criteria before you set your target.

The Hill received £8,500 from Creative Scotland, which matches up to £10,000 for creative projects in Scotland. By the time the campaign launched publicly, a significant portion of the target was already secured. Show of Hands Festival raised £28,712 for their annual folk festival, combining crowd support with match funding to reach a target that crowd donations alone would have struggled to hit.

But match funding isn’t just something you have to apply for. You can also bring your own.

If you have a relationship with a venue, a music charity, a trust, a local authority or a brand that supports independent music, they can add their own pot of funding directly to your campaign. When they do, every donation from your crowd triggers a matched contribution from them, up to a limit they set. It turns a two-way transaction between you and your backers into something bigger — a three-way partnership that gives funders a tangible, public way to support music they believe in.

This is more common than most independent musicians realise. Help Musicians, arts councils, local music funds and venue networks have all run matched campaigns this way. A venue that believes in your project might not be able to write you a cheque, but they might be willing to match the first £2,000 of public donations — which effectively doubles what your crowd raises up to that point.

Promoting your campaign

Once you’re live, the job becomes communication. Daily. For the full length of the campaign.

Most campaigns follow a predictable arc: a strong start driven by early backers, a quieter middle section, then a final surge as the deadline approaches. Knowing this in advance helps you plan your content and avoid panic during the slow period — it is normal, and it doesn’t mean the campaign is failing.

Launch hard. The first 24 hours set the tone. Have your early supporters ready to go on day one. Send personal emails and messages to your inner circle — not a broadcast, but direct individual asks that explain what the project is and why their support matters. Ask them to share it with two or three people who might care.

Stay visible throughout. Regular updates on social channels and direct to backers keep the campaign alive. Content that works well: short updates on progress and challenges, clips of the music being made, milestone posts (“We’re 50% there”), public thank-yous. Keep your campaign link in your bio throughout.

Reach beyond your existing audience. Think about who else cares about what you’re making. Music blogs, local radio, community organisations, venues you’ve played, fan forums, online communities around your genre. A feature that frames the campaign as a story works better than a bare announcement.

Make the final 48 hours count. The closing deadline creates urgency. A final push to your whole network, a clear countdown, reminders to anyone who said they’d back it but hasn’t yet.

Grassroots Rising raised £118,828 for their grassroots music project, a campaign that succeeded in large part because of sustained community promotion over its full run — regular updates, milestone moments and a story that kept developing in public as the funds grew.

After the campaign: delivering and building long-term fans

When the campaign ends, three things need to happen.

Get the money sorted. Funds are paid to your linked bank account within around seven working days. Use this moment to finalise your budget against what you actually raised.

Fulfil your rewards. Digital rewards should go out quickly, within days if possible. For physical rewards and experiences, communicate clear timelines and stick to them. Being organised here protects your reputation for future campaigns.

Keep talking to your backers. This is the part most people underestimate. Your backers are not just people who gave you money — they are the core of your future audience. Share updates as the project progresses: photos from the studio, artwork reveals, the first test press, the release date, the tour. Tell them first. They backed you before anyone else had heard it.

The musicians who get the most from crowdfunding are not the ones who run a single successful campaign. They are the ones who treat each campaign as a chapter in an ongoing relationship with a growing crowd.

Success stories: how musicians are using Crowdfunder

These real Crowdfunder campaigns show the range of ways musicians and music projects are successfully using crowdfunding — from album releases and live performance to community impact and artist development.

Marisa and the Moths raised £23,412 from 221 supporters to fund the release of their second album. The campaign worked because the goal was specific, the storytelling was honest, and the rewards gave fans genuine ways to be part of the moment. Rewards ranged from early digital downloads to signed vinyl and personalised experiences for superfans.

Singing with Nightingales raised £17,545 from 183 supporters for a series of site-specific live music performances combining sound and nature. The project offered experiences rather than recordings, and the storytelling focused on something shared and ephemeral rather than a product to be delivered — attracting backers from wellbeing, live art and environmental communities as well as music fans.

Return from Helsinki raised £37,674 with no match funding — entirely from the crowd — to produce a tune book and album. A strong example of a purely crowd-led music campaign: no institutional backing, just an artist with a specific project, a clear story, and an audience willing to fund it.

The New Jazz Bar raised £43,619 to save their venue and the music community built around it. Not a record or a tour, but a space — and proof that crowdfunding works as well for the infrastructure of music as it does for the music itself.

Ready to start?

The practical first step is to cost your project properly and decide on your target. Everything else follows from that.

If you’re not sure whether your project is right for crowdfunding, or whether you might qualify for match funding, the best thing to do is look at what’s already been funded — there’s a lot to learn from campaigns that have already worked.

Start your campaign

Useful links

The post Crowdfunder Stories | Watch the series appeared first on Crowdfunder Stories.

Why this artist is running a crowdfunder and a prize draw at the same time

Rebecca Hughes — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 11:52:25 +0100

When Ella Starling launched her fundraising campaign for Ceasefire, a large-scale oil painting reinterpreting Picasso’s Guernica in response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza — she didn’t choose between a crowdfunder and a prize draw. She ran both, simultaneously, for two different reasons.

It’s a smart approach that more creative projects should know about.

The project

Ella Starling is a figurative painter, mother and activist from Pembrokeshire, Wales. Her previous project, Raising Her Voice: A Collective Portrait of Motherhood, was funded by Arts Council Wales and culminated in two solo exhibitions in Spring 2026.

Ceasefire is her most ambitious work yet: a large-scale oil painting filling her studio wall, reinterpreting Picasso’s Guernica as a painted response to events in Gaza. The project began with a study trip to Madrid, supported by a bursary from a-n The Artists Information Company, to study Guernica in person. Nine months of making, documenting and sharing the process publicly will follow, with completion and a public exhibition planned for Spring 2027.

To fund it, she needs £5,500 — covering materials, studio costs, documentation and the time to make something at this scale properly.

Two campaigns, two different jobs

Ella has two live projects on Crowdfunder running alongside each other.

The crowdfunding campaign — Ceasefire: A painted response to genocide in Gaza — is her main fundraiser. Supporters can donate and choose from a range of rewards: prints, original studies, studio visits, and a chance to have their name in the exhibition. The rewards give people a meaningful way to connect with the work itself, not just the cause behind it. At £5,500 target, with 33 days left, the campaign is at 28%.

The prize draw — Win ‘That Feeling’ — offers something different. For £5, anyone can enter to win That Feeling, an original oil painting from her previous Raising Her Voice project, professionally framed and ready to hang. It’s a one-of-a-kind work, not a print. The prize draw exists to reach people who might not back a crowdfunding campaign but will enter a draw for an original painting — widening the audience beyond Ella’s existing supporters.

The two campaigns can’t be combined on a single page — prize draws and crowdfunding are separate products on Crowdfunder. But running them simultaneously is entirely possible, and in this case it’s a deliberate strategy.

Why it works

The crowdfunder converts committed supporters. People who care about Ella’s work, who want to follow the process of making Ceasefire, who want a print or a study or their name in the exhibition — they back the campaign. The rewards give them something specific to connect to.

The prize draw broadens the crowd. A £5 entry point is accessible to people who’ve never heard of Ella Starling and might not be ready to back an arts crowdfunder. But an original oil painting as a prize? That travels. It reaches art collectors, people who follow prize draws, people who share it because the prize is genuinely desirable.

Together, they build two different supporter relationships. The crowdfunder backers become part of the project — they’re invested in seeing it completed. The prize draw entrants become part of Ella’s audience. Some of them will follow her work long after the draw closes.

The broader point

Most people assume crowdfunding is an either/or decision. Either you run a donation campaign, or a rewards campaign, or a prize draw. Either you go all-in on one approach or you split your attention and dilute the impact.

Ella’s approach shows that’s not the case. The two products do different things, reach different people, and sit alongside each other without competing. One deepens relationships with existing supporters. The other opens the door to new ones.

On Crowdfunder, you can run a prize draw and a crowdfunding campaign at the same time. You can have rewards on your crowdfunder and a separate draw for something special. You can design a fundraising approach that fits the project, rather than fitting the project into a single fundraising format.

Ceasefire is still live. If you’d like to back the campaign or enter the draw, both pages are open now.

Back the Ceasefire crowdfunder →

Enter the prize draw →

Get started on Crowdfunder

Learn more about prize draws

The post Crowdfunder Stories | Watch the series appeared first on Crowdfunder Stories.

Why regular donations are an underused tool on Crowdfunder

Rebecca Hughes — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 14:42:38 +0100

Most crowdfunding campaigns are built around a moment. A target, a deadline, a push to get there. And we know that works; it creates urgency, it gets people moving, and when it goes well, it’s one of the most satisfying things in fundraising.

But what happens after the campaign closes?

For a lot of organisations, the answer is: you start again. New appeal, new target, new ask to the same people who already backed you once. Regular donations are a different approach, and for organisations with ongoing costs, they’re often a better one.

What regular donations actually do

When a supporter makes a regular donation on Crowdfunder, their contribution repeats automatically on the same date each month. They don’t need to do anything again. You don’t need to ask again. The money arrives, month after month, for as long as they choose to keep giving.

That’s a meaningfully different relationship to a one-off gift. A one-off donation is a transaction. A regular donation is a commitment — and the supporters who make them tend to feel more invested in what you’re doing, not less, over time.

For organisations running ongoing services — a food bank, a community space, a youth programme, a conservation project — that steady income changes what’s possible. You can plan further ahead. You can budget for the things that don’t stop when a campaign ends: staff time, rent, running costs, the work itself.

Research shows the average UK donor gives regularly to around two or three causes at a time. People want to feel like they’re doing good — and a standing monthly commitment is how many of them do that. The question isn’t whether your supporters are already giving regularly to something. It’s whether your project is one of the things they’ve chosen.

The number that matters

Over £1 million has been raised through regular donations on Crowdfunder, across 68,000 individual payments from 6,750 supporters. The average monthly gift is £17.93.

That’s not a headline number. It’s a quiet, reliable one — which is exactly the point.

How to make it work

Switching regular donations on is the easy part. You can do it during project set-up or at any time afterwards from your project dashboard.

The harder part — and the more important part — is giving your supporters a reason to choose monthly over once.

The projects that do this well are specific. Not “support us every month” but “£10 a month covers one food parcel every fortnight, for as long as you choose to give it.” Not “help us keep going” but “£5 a month plants a tree every month and funds the volunteer days that keep them alive.”

The difference between a vague ask and a specific one is the difference between a supporter thinking “maybe” and thinking “yes.”

In your project description, try covering three things: what ongoing costs a regular donation covers, what their gift adds up to over time, and what keeps happening because they stayed.

Give your supporters a way to stay

Your campaign runs exactly as it would. You set a target, tell your story, share it with your crowd. Regular donations simply give supporters one more option when they go to back you — monthly instead of once.

Switch it on during set-up or at any time from your project dashboard. The relationships you build during a campaign don’t have to end when it does.

Switch regular donations on →

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Match funding, TikToks and more: what we’ve shipped this month

Rebecca Hughes — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 16:18:14 +0100

July 2026

We ship updates to Crowdfunder regularly, and most of them don’t come with a fanfare. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s landed recently.

New ways to show off your project on your project page
Frictionless password setup
Updated ways to liven up your story

TikToks and YouTube Shorts on your project page

If you’ve already got a video on TikTok or YouTube Shorts that captures exactly what your project is about, you can now add it directly to your project page. No re-uploading, no downloading and re-hosting elsewhere, just paste the link and it appears. Most people tell their story on social first anyway. Now your project page can keep up.

Live password validation

Small but satisfying. When you’re setting or changing your password, the rules now tick off in real time as you type, so you know before you hit submit whether you’re good to go. One less reason to end up stuck at the login screen.

Emojis in projects, rewards and updates

You can now use emojis in your project description, reward tiers and campaign updates. It’s a small thing, but your project page is yours, and if a 🎉 or a 🌱 fits the story you’re telling, it should be there.

Coming soon

We’re working on some bigger things that we’ll be sharing in August — including a new project owner dashboard built to give you a much clearer picture of how your campaign is performing and what to do next.

Get started

Do you want to help shape the future of the platform? Give us some feedback!

Feedback form

The post Crowdfunder Stories | Watch the series appeared first on Crowdfunder Stories.

How to run a prize draw for your zoo or wildlife park

Rebecca Hughes — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 17:26:59 +0100

Prize draws are one of the most effective fundraising tools available to zoos and wildlife parks in the UK, yet still one of the most underused. They lower the barrier to entry for supporters, reach audiences far beyond your existing visitor base, and can be built around the thing you already have that no other charity does: direct access to extraordinary animals.

This guide covers everything you need to know to run a successful prize draw on Crowdfunder, from choosing your prize to promoting it and picking your winner.

Why prize draws work so well for zoos

Most fundraising asks require a supporter to give with nothing in return. A prize draw changes that equation. For £5 or £10, someone gets a chance to win something genuinely exciting; and your zoo gets a supporter, a new contact, and funds raised.

For zoos and wildlife parks specifically, the prize draw format has three particular advantages.

You have prizes no one else can offer. A behind-the-scenes experience with your keepers, a chance to feed an endangered animal, a private after-hours tour; these are money-can’t-buy prizes that no voucher or product giveaway can replicate. The exclusivity is the point.
Your cause resonates. Wildlife conservation, animal welfare, and habitat protection are causes people care deeply about. A prize draw that connects entry to a tangible conservation outcome, “every £5 entry helps fund our red panda breeding programme”, gives supporters a reason to enter beyond just winning.
You can run them repeatedly. Edinburgh Zoo ran twelve consecutive prize draws on Crowdfunder over several years, raising over £400,000 in total across those campaigns with 16,745 supporters. A well-run draw builds a list of engaged supporters you can return to again and again.

What makes a great zoo prize draw prize?

The prize is everything. A good zoo prize draw prize has three qualities: it’s exclusive, it’s experiential, and it’s connected to your animals or mission.

Behind-the-scenes experiences: Keeper-for-a-day, animal feeding sessions, private guided tours outside public hours; these are the gold standard for zoo prize draws. Edinburgh Zoo built an entire multi-year campaign around their Giant Panda Magic Moment, and Wild Planet Trust in Paignton ran a draw around an exclusive meet and greet with Mo, their sloth. The animal is the prize.
Once-in-a-lifetime encounters: The further the prize goes from what a normal visitor can access, the more compelling it becomes. WWF, Fauna & Flora and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund ran a joint prize draw on Crowdfunder for a seven-day trip to Rwanda and Uganda to track mountain gorillas in the wild, with a £2,000 flights voucher included. That prize raised significant funds precisely because it was genuinely irreplaceable.
Multiple prizes to widen appeal: Edinburgh Zoo’s Christmas Magic Moment draw offered 12 winners a choice of animal encounter at either Edinburgh Zoo or Highland Wildlife Park. Multiple prizes lower the barrier further: better odds, more winners, more buzz when results are announced.
Partnerships and donated prizes: If your zoo has a relationship with a hotel, a travel company, or a wildlife tour operator, a donated prize partnership removes cost from your end entirely. Edinburgh Zoo partnered with the Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh for an overnight stay alongside their private zoo access prize. The hotel got visibility, the zoo got a world-class prize at no cost.

How to set up your prize draw on Crowdfunder

Setting up a prize draw on Crowdfunder is free and takes about 20 minutes. There are no platform fees for not-for-profit organisations.

What you’ll need before you start:

Your prize clearly defined (what it is, who it’s for, any age restrictions or access requirements)
A fundraising target and closing date
Terms and conditions for the draw (Crowdfunder provides a template)
A free entry route — this is a legal requirement (more on this below)

Step by step:

Go to crowdfunder.co.uk and create a project
Select prize draw as the project type
Describe your prize, your cause, and how the funds raised will be used
Set your entry price (£5 per entry is standard; you can allow multiple entries)
Set your closing date — a minimum of 14 days is required
Upload your terms and conditions
Publish and start promoting

The free entry route: what you need to know

Every prize draw on Crowdfunder must include a free entry route. This is a legal requirement under UK gambling law; without it, a prize draw can be classified as a lottery, which requires a licence.

A free entry route means anyone can enter without paying, typically by sending a postcard or email. The free entry route must be as accessible as the paid route, and free entrants must have the same chance of winning as paid entrants.

The free entry route must offer the same chance of winning as paid entry, be no harder to use, and be clearly signposted. Free entrants must be added to the pool of entries before you pick a winner.

Setting your entry price and target

Entry price: £5 per entry is the standard for most zoo prize draws and the format Edinburgh Zoo used consistently across their campaigns. A lower price point makes the draw accessible to families and maximises the number of entrants. You can allow multiple entries, which increases both revenue and individual supporter investment.

Fundraising target: Set a target based on the size of your audience and the appeal of your prize. A behind-the-scenes animal encounter with a moderate social following might target £1,000–£3,000. A high-profile partnership prize draw with a large email list can target significantly more. Edinburgh Zoo’s draws consistently raised tens of thousands across their monthly series.

All or nothing vs keep what you raise: If you choose all or nothing, you only receive funds if you hit your target, and all entries are refunded if you don’t. Keep what you raise means you receive everything pledged regardless. For prize draws, keep what you raise is often more appropriate; you’re awarding the prize either way, so there’s no reason to risk returning the funds.

How to promote your prize draw

Your existing audience first: Your email list is your most valuable asset. A prize draw email to your existing supporter database, members, past visitors, and newsletter subscribers should be the first thing you send before promoting anywhere else. People who already care about your zoo are most likely to enter and most likely to share.

Social media: Prize draws are naturally shareable. The prize should do most of the work; a video of the animal encounter you’re offering as the prize is worth a hundred text posts. Instagram and Facebook tend to work best for zoo audiences; TikTok is increasingly strong for wildlife content.

Repeat communications: Don’t just send one email and one post. Plan a promotion schedule: a launch announcement, a midpoint reminder with a progress update, a final week countdown, and a closing day push. Each touch point should have something new, an update on funds raised, a story from a keeper, a piece of animal content.

Press: Local press will often cover a well-framed prize draw, especially if the prize is genuinely unusual. “Win a private night at the zoo with [celebrity keeper name]” is a story. Lead with the prize and the conservation cause, not the fundraising mechanics.

Partner amplification: If your prize involves a hotel or travel partner, ask them to promote the draw to their own audience. Their guests and followers are a warm audience who may never have heard of your zoo. This is one of the most powerful reach extensions available to a prize draw and costs nothing extra.

Any advertising or promotional material for your draw must comply with the CAP Code, including making clear that a free entry route exists.

Picking your winner

When your draw closes, use Crowdfunder’s free random number generator to select your winner.

Before you run the draw, make sure all free entry route entries have been added to your list alongside the paid entries; every entrant must have an equal chance.

Record your inputs and outputs (the range of entry numbers, how many winners, and the winning number drawn) as your evidence of a fair draw.

Notify your winner promptly and announce the result publicly, on social media, in your next email, and on the prize draw page itself. A celebratory post with a photo of the winner enjoying their prize (with permission) is excellent content and builds trust for your next draw.

Making it repeatable

The zoos that raise the most from prize draws don’t run one and stop. Edinburgh Zoo ran twelve consecutive draws and built a community of over 16,000 supporters in the process. Each draw added names to their list, each winner became an advocate, and each campaign was easier to promote than the last.

A quarterly or seasonal draw, a spring animal encounter, a summer family experience, a Christmas magic moment, gives supporters something to look forward to and gives your fundraising team a reliable, repeatable income stream that doesn’t depend on a single campaign going viral.

The animal changes. The prize changes. The format stays the same. And it works every time.

Retargeting with Meta Pixel

If your zoo runs paid social advertising, adding the Meta Pixel to your prize draw campaign page lets you retarget everyone who visits but doesn’t enter. For organisations with a recognised brand and an existing audience, zoo members, past visitors, and conservation supporters, this is one of the most cost-effective ways to convert warm interest into entries. Someone who’s visited your zoo three times and clicked your draw page twice is far more likely to enter with a gentle retargeted reminder than a cold audience seeing your ad for the first time.

Crowdfunder supports Meta Pixel integration directly on your project page, so you can run retargeting campaigns without any custom development. For larger organisations already running social ads, it’s a meaningful lever, particularly in the final week of a draw when urgency is highest.

Real zoo prize draws on Crowdfunder

Edinburgh Zoo (RZSS) ran twelve prize draws on Crowdfunder, raising over £400,000 from thousands of supporters. What made their approach distinctive was consistency and variety: prizes ranged from private overnight zoo access and a luxury Waldorf Astoria hotel stay, to monthly Giant Panda Magic Moments, Christmas animal encounter draws offering 12 winners their choice of keeper experience, and a towering giraffe sculpture alongside a behind-the-scenes day with keepers. By running draws regularly and building a list of engaged supporters over time, Edinburgh Zoo turned prize draws into a reliable, repeatable income stream rather than a one-off campaign.

Wild Planet Trust (Paignton Zoo) ran a sloth meet and greet draw offering an exclusive encounter with Mo the sloth, from £5 per entry. The draw raised funds for the zoo’s conservation work and demonstrates how a single, well-loved animal can anchor an entire campaign.

Drusillas Park ran a prize draw on Flash the sloth’s birthday — a 30–40 minute non-contact sloth feeding experience for two people, with 100% of proceeds going to the Sloth Conservation Foundation. A good example of a draw with dual purpose: engaging visitors and directing funds to a named conservation partner.

Whipsnade Zoo is currently running a draw giving supporters the chance to help name their new elephant calf, from £5 per entry. The naming hook is a clever mechanic that gives entrants a sense of personal investment beyond just winning.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park ran a prize draw tied directly to a rescue mission: supporters could win a £1,500 family getaway to the park, including a luxury stay, meals and VIP perks, while helping fund the rescue and rehoming of a Ukrainian lion family. A strong example of how a prize draw can be built around a specific, urgent conservation story rather than a generic fundraising ask.

Bristol Zoo Project offered lifetime membership for two as their prize, raising funds for their conservation and education charity. Lifetime membership is one of the highest-value prizes a zoo can offer at near-zero cost, and it connects the winner directly to the organisation’s long-term mission.

Twycross Zoo is running a draw for the first-ever Ultimate Capybara Experience, as part of a wider campaign to raise £500,000 towards a world-class Bornean orangutan habitat. A great example of a prize draw used as a stepping stone toward a much bigger goal: the capybara experience generates excitement and funds while raising awareness of the orangutan project the money ultimately supports.

Ready to start?

Running a prize draw on Crowdfunder is free. There are no platform fees for not-for-profit zoos and wildlife parks, and support is available at every stage.

Start your prize draw

Read prize draw guidelines

The post Crowdfunder Stories | Watch the series appeared first on Crowdfunder Stories.

How to create a great Crowdfunder project page

Rebecca Hughes — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:31:53 +0100

Your project page is doing a lot of work. It needs to convince a stranger, in under a minute, that your idea is worth backing, your team is worth trusting, and that now is the right time to give. This can be tricky for project pages to achieve. Not because the projects aren’t good, but because the page doesn’t give the idea the space it deserves.

This guide walks you through every element of a strong project page, using a real example from a project that got it right. Whether you’re building your page for the first time or coming back to improve one that isn’t converting, there’s something here for you.

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What makes a good project page?

The best project pages do four things well:

They make a stranger feel the stakes quickly
They put a real person at the centre of the story
They make it obvious what the money actually does
They give people a reason to act today, not eventually

None of those things requires professional design, polished video, or a big following. They require clarity, honesty, and a bit of courage in the writing.

A real example: Bubble Club

Throughout this guide, we’ll use the Bubble Club documentary as our working example, a film project following a radically inclusive club scene led by people with learning disabilities. It’s a strong page that demonstrates almost every best practice in one place.

Your aim: one sentence, one breath

The aim sits at the top of your page, the first thing anyone reads. It should tell a stranger what you’re doing, for whom, and why, in a single sentence.

Bubble Club’s aim: “A documentary exploring why nightlife matters, following a radically inclusive club scene led by people with learning disabilities.”

That’s 20 words. Subject, method, community. Nothing wasted.

The test: read your aim out loud. If it takes more than one breath, cut it down. If a stranger couldn’t tell you what you do after reading it, rewrite it.

Your opening line: lead with conviction, not your organisation

The most common mistake on project pages is opening with the organisation name: “We are [charity name], a registered charity working with…” This tells a new visitor nothing they care about.

Bubble Club opens with four words: “Dancefloors are for everyone.”

That’s a conviction. A position. Before you’ve read anything else, you know what this project stands for. Lead with what you believe; your organisation’s name can come later.

Your story: problem, solution, who benefits

Once you’ve got someone’s attention, you need to hold it. The structure that works is simple:

1. The problem — what’s broken, missing, or at risk? Make it concrete. A real place, a real situation.

2. Your solution — what are you actually doing? Not “support young people” but “weekly music sessions for 30 teenagers in Salford.”

3. Why you — what makes your group the right people to do this? Community trust, lived experience, track record.

4. Who benefits — put a face on it. Bubble Club names five real people — Wayne, Kirsty, Lloydie, Adam, Sukhraj — each with a specific one-line portrait. A backer can’t care about “young people in our community.” They can care about Wayne, who goes straight from his supermarket shift to the dancefloor.

One named, specific person is worth a paragraph of statistics.

Have fun with your project page. You could add illustrated headers to show the personality of your project, like The Bank of Dreams & Nightmares.

Your video: authentic beats produced

Projects with a video raise significantly more than those without. But the video doesn’t need to be polished — it needs to be real.

A 90-second phone video of you speaking directly to the camera, in natural light, explaining why this matters, is worth more than a five-minute produced piece. Backers want to see a person, not a presentation.

Do: speak to the camera, show the place or the people, keep it under two minutes
Don’t: use AI images, slides, stock footage, or a voice-over with no faces

Your funding target: show what the money does

Supporters want to know their money does something real. Bubble Club breaks its target into five clear deliverables: continuing filming, developing set pieces, expanding the team, building the soundtrack, and delivering a finished cut ready for festival premiere.

That’s not a grant budget, it’s a list of things you’d recognise as real.

The rule: every line of your budget breakdown should be something a stranger could picture. “Filming across the full year” — yes. “Project delivery costs” — no.

If your project has match funding, explain it prominently and specifically. What triggers it? What’s the deadline? Match funding can double the impact of every pound and gives supporters a genuine reason to act now rather than later.

The average donation on a match-funded campaign is £70 compared to £40 on an unmatched one.

The “why now”: urgency that isn’t manufactured

Every strong project page answers the question: why does this need to happen now, not in a year?

For Bubble Club, it’s cultural, club venues are closing across the UK, and for people with learning disabilities, access to late-night social spaces has always been a radical act. The urgency isn’t a countdown clock. It’s a real situation.

Ask yourself: what’s at stake if this doesn’t happen? What’s closing, disappearing, or at risk? Name it.

Social proof: who else believes in this

Supporters who arrive on your page cold need a signal that others already trust you. Bubble Club mentions named supporters, organisations that have already backed the project publicly. Even one credible name changes how a stranger reads everything that follows.

Before you go live, ask: who has already said yes to this in some form? A letter of support, a partner organisation, a venue that’s offered space, any of these can be mentioned.

Your closing line: a direct ask

End with a clear, direct ask. Not “please consider donating if you can”, but “your support will help us finish it.”

Conviction is more persuasive than hedging. The best closing paragraphs tell someone exactly what to do next, in one sentence.

Rewards: give something back

If your project has rewards, they’re not just perks; they’re part of the story. The best rewards feel personal, exclusive, and connected to what you’re creating.

A few principles:

Backers can donate without opting for a reward, but it can also remove friction to have an entry tier around £10, for people who just want to back you without needing anything in return
Spread your tiers across a real range (£10, £25, £50, £100+) so people can show how much they care
Make rewards feel like they come from the world of your project, a soundtrack, a named credit, a limited print, not a generic tote bag
Only offer what you can genuinely deliver under pressure

Bubble Club’s reward section runs from £10 (support the film) to £120 (a limited Radically Inclusive Nightlife poster). Every reward has a real photograph and a name that tells you exactly what you’re getting.

Crowdfunder also has an album of generic reward images if you need a helping hand. Alternatively, if you rewards aren’t physical you can get creative with your images like Mammy’s House: Untold Irish LGBTQ+ AIDS Play.

The details that matter more than you think

Your URL slug is permanent once you go live. Make it readable: crowdfunder.co.uk/p/our-village-cinema — not crowdfunder.co.uk/p/project-38471. It appears in Google, in shares, and in emails. Treat it like a headline.

Your profile photo should be a real photo of a real person, not a logo. Supporters are giving money to someone. A face builds trust faster than a brand mark.

Your funding target should be the minimum needed to actually deliver the project. Round numbers feel considered, £15,000 reads as a decision; £13,750 reads like a grant budget copy-pasted in.

Your launch plan: the first 48 hours

A strong page on its own isn’t enough. Projects that reach 30% of their target in the first 48 hours are far more likely to succeed, because new visitors can see that momentum is already there.

Before you go live, tell 20 people personally and ask them to support on day one. Not to share, to support. Pledges build visible momentum; shares without pledges don’t.

Once you’re live:

Post an update every five to seven days, even small news, to re-engage people who’ve already visited. Updates automatically notify everyone who has already supported you, so use them.
Name the deadline in every share. Urgency that’s visible converts better than urgency people have to go looking for.
In the final 48 hours, personal asks outperform broadcast posts every time.

Before you go live: the checklist

Run through these before you hit publish:

⬜ Aim is one sentence a stranger could read and immediately understand
⬜ Opening line leads with conviction or the problem — not organisation’s name
⬜ You’ve named at least one real person who benefits from this project
⬜ Video uploaded — any quality, under two minutes
⬜ At least one photo of real people or the real place
⬜ Funding target broken into specific, tangible things the money pays for
⬜ Match funding is explained prominently if your project has it
⬜ Any named supporters or endorsements mentioned
⬜ Rewards are deliverable and feel connected to the project
⬜ URL slug is readable before going live
⬜ 20+ people primed to support on day one
⬜ Plan for updates: day seven, halfway, final 48 hours

One last thing

The gap between a project page that meets its target and one that falls short is rarely the idea. It’s almost always the approach and the page. Projects that tell a real story, show real people, and ask clearly and directly raise more, not because they’ve gamed the system, but because they’ve given strangers a reason to care.

Your idea deserves a page that does it justice. Take the time to get these elements right before you go live. The project will thank you for it.

Ready to start your project? Get started

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How Sport England turned £6 million into £18.9 million with Crowdfunder

Rebecca Hughes — Fri, 10 Jul 2026 11:11:30 +0100

Watch: Sport England on crowdfunding

Hear directly from Sport England’s Programme Manager on how the partnership worked, what surprised them, and why crowdfunding is now embedded as part of their ongoing Movement Fund offer.

When Sport England set out to reach more grassroots communities across England, they needed a funding model that could do more than write cheques. They needed something that could find organisations traditional grant programmes miss, cut through the administration that slows smaller groups down, and prove that public investment in community sport could go further than anyone expected.

That’s where Crowdfunder came in.

The challenge

Sport England is a public body dedicated to supporting grassroots sport and physical activity across England. But like many large funders, they faced a familiar set of problems: how do you reach the smallest, most grassroots organisations? How do you simplify an application process that often puts off the very groups you most want to fund? And how do you measure whether the money is actually making a difference?

Traditional grant programmes proved limiting. The application procedures were cumbersome, the reach was narrow, and smaller community groups, village halls, informal sports clubs, and non-traditional organisations, often fell through the gaps.

The approach

Sport England partnered with Crowdfunder to pilot a new model: using crowdfunding as the mechanism for distributing match funding to community sports projects across England.

The model worked like this. Community groups raised money from their own supporters on Crowdfunder. Sport England matched a portion of what the crowd raised, up to a set amount per project. To qualify for the match, groups had to demonstrate real community backing — not just a good application form, but actual people putting actual money in.

This changed everything about who applied and who succeeded.

Crowdfunding connected Sport England with a wider network of community groups than traditional programmes had ever reached — including organisations in underserved communities that had rarely engaged with public funding before. The application process was simpler, the community validation was built in, and the results spoke for themselves.

“For every pound we’ve put in, it’s been trebled.” Neil Smith, Programme Manager at Sport England

The results

£18.9 million raised in total Sport England invested £6 million. The crowd added £12.9 million on top. That’s a 313% amplification — for every £1 Sport England put in, £2.13 came back from the community.

1,103 successful projects Across England, more than a thousand diverse community sports projects were funded through the partnership.

149,000 supporters An average of 135 supporters backed each campaign, demonstrating the depth of grassroots engagement the model unlocks.

Simplified funding for everyone Automated calculations, efficient decision-making, and a straightforward application process reduced the burden on both Sport England’s team and the organisations they funded.

What it meant for the funded organisations

The impact went well beyond the money raised. Organisations that crowdfunded with Sport England’s match funding reported:

87% felt better connected to their communities
86% felt more financially stable
86% strengthened their public profile
83% built new audiences
56% established a larger group of volunteers
54% built a new donor base actively engaged with their work
52% found new partners or collaborators

Crowdfunding didn’t just fund the project. It built the organisation.

What made it work

Genuine collaboration. The partnership adapted through changing circumstances — including the challenges of Covid-19 — and improved throughout. The ability to test, learn, and iterate was central to the model’s success.

Community validation built in. Because groups had to raise real money from real supporters to unlock the match funding, every successful application came pre-validated by the people it was meant to serve. That’s something a traditional application form can’t replicate.

A new kind of reach. Pilots like “Activate Your Space” brought Crowdfunder’s network to communities that hadn’t previously engaged with Sport England’s funding. The platform’s reach extended the funder’s reach.

“Crowdfunding’s been going on a trajectory of being really successful… it’s now embedded as part of our new ongoing open-funding offer, Movement Fund.” Neil Smith, Programme Manager at Sport England

A blueprint for funders

The Sport England partnership is one of the most significant examples of crowdfunding used as a funding distribution model in the UK. It demonstrates that public and institutional funding goes further, reaches more people, and creates more lasting impact when it’s matched by genuine community investment.

If you’re a local authority, trust, foundation, or corporate funder exploring how to make your money work harder, we’d love to talk.

Find out how Crowdfunder works for funders and partners →

See live match funding opportunities →

The post Crowdfunder Stories | Watch the series appeared first on Crowdfunder Stories.

The high street isn’t what it used to be. Communities are taking it back.

Rebecca Hughes — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:35:59 +0100

Reading time: 7 minutes

Walk down almost any town centre in the UK and you’ll see the same story told in two halves. On one side: shuttered units, faded fascias, the ghost of a chain that left three years ago. On the other: a bakery that opened last spring, a community pub that nearly closed but didn’t, a music venue with hand-painted signage and a gig on every Friday.

The difference between those two halves, more often than you’d think, is crowdfunding.

The “death of the high street” has been a reliable media headline for over a decade. And the statistics are real; across UK high streets, between 10-19% of shops now stand empty. Retail vacancy rates climbed, chains retreated, footfall dropped. But something else has been happening quietly alongside that decline. Communities have been buying back the spaces that the market abandoned. Not waiting for a developer or a council grant or a chain to move in. Just asking the people who live there to fund it.

The result is a different kind of high street. One that belongs to the people who use it.

What the new high street actually looks like

In Drewsteignton, Devon, locals raised £547,210 to buy and renovate the Drewe Arms, a community pub that had been at the heart of village life for generations. Not a landlord’s pub. Not a managed house. A pub owned by the community that drinks in it.

In Reading, Siren Craft Brew raised £271,732 from the people who love their beer to open an independent venue in the town centre, championing local food, drink, and the kind of social space no chain was ever going to provide.

In Hull, The New Clarence became the city’s first community-owned pub, raising £248,625 to secure its future. In Bristol, Jamaica Street Studios raised over £106,000 to bring a cultural landmark into community ownership before it was lost.

And across the UK, Own Our Venues has raised over £4 million across two Crowdfunder campaigns to buy the actual buildings that house grassroots music venues, so that the next generation of artists has somewhere to play, and the crowds who love live music have somewhere to go.

These aren’t charity campaigns. They’re communities investing in their own places.

Why this is happening on Crowdfunder and not somewhere else

This is the part that matters for anyone thinking about launching a campaign.

Platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo are built for global product launches. They’re excellent if you’re shipping a gadget to 12,000 strangers across four continents. But if you’re trying to save the pub on your street, a global audience of strangers isn’t what you need.

You need the people who walk past it every day

And it turns out those people show up. Crowdfunder’s data consistently shows that for community projects, the vast majority of pledges come from within a close geographic radius. Local projects are defined as having an average pledge distance of less than 80km. These tend to be projects with great community interest, such as cafes, bookshops, and wellbeing hubs, etc. Our data shows that local projects actually have an average pledge distance of less than 13km, highlighting how localised backers’ interest can be. The crowd that funds a community project isn’t the internet. It’s the neighbourhood.

Crowdfunding, in this model, becomes a mechanism for communities to support each other across postcodes, something no global platform is designed to facilitate, and no donation page captures.

On the flipside, projects occasionally capture hearts far and wide. The Elm Tree Pub in Weymouth, Dorset, had around 1,828 supporters from across the United States after their social media video went viral, versus the 775 UK backers.

@friendsoftheelmtree
Save the Elm Tree Inn by donating to their Crowdfunding page, and help us preserve this iconic piece of history for our Gen Zs and beyond. #saveourpub #elmtreeinn #langtonherring #dorset #iconic #crowdfunding #historic @LoveWeymouthUK @Weymouth in Dorset @ChesilRadio @Abbey Farm Flowers @dorsetplaces @Greatest Hits Radio @BBC News @itvnews @Dorset Spotlight Magazine @Dorset @Dorset View @Dorset Council UK
♬ original sound – Friends of The Elm Tree

The urgency that actually makes it work

There’s another structural reason why community projects tend to raise more on Crowdfunder than on platforms built for passive, open-ended giving.

Crowdfunder campaigns have deadlines. That’s not a limitation, it’s a feature.

Every fundraiser knows that urgency drives action. An open-ended donation page tells supporters: give whenever you like. A campaign with a closing date tells them: if this doesn’t get funded by the 28th, it doesn’t happen. That’s a different conversation entirely. It’s why the Drewe Arms raised over half a million pounds. The community knew that if they didn’t act, the pub would close. The deadline made the stakes real.

GoFundMe campaigns, by design, run indefinitely. For personal emergencies, that makes sense. For a community project trying to build momentum and convert passive supporters into active backers, a campaign with a clear start and end is almost always more effective.

It’s not just about raising money

The thing that doesn’t get said enough about community crowdfunding is what happens to the people involved after the campaign ends.

When 400 people back a project, those 400 people have a stake in it. They tell their friends it’s open. They leave reviews. They come back. They back the next phase. The Drewe Arms didn’t just raise £547,000 — it created a community of co-owners who are personally invested in whether it succeeds. You can’t buy that kind of advocacy. You can only earn it by letting people be part of something.

This is what separates a crowdfunding campaign from a donation page. A donation page raises money. A campaign builds a crowd.

And that crowd; those backers, those co-owners, those people who put in £25 because they believed in it, is the real asset. The money funds the project. The crowd keeps it alive.

The government has noticed

In February 2026, the government announced £150 million in funding to revive UK high streets, with community-led regeneration at its centre. The language in the announcement was striking: “decisions driven by people who know their neighbourhoods best.”

That’s exactly what Crowdfunder campaigns have been doing for over a decade.

Read more — Pride in Place funding: how to set up a match fund

What this means if you’re thinking about launching

If you’re sitting on a project that would change something about your town, your street, or your community, a space that needs saving, a business that needs backing, a venue that deserves to exist, here’s what the evidence suggests:

Your crowd is closer than you think. The people who’ll fund it probably already walk past the thing you’re trying to build. You don’t need to reach strangers in San Francisco. You need to reach your neighbours, and it turns out, they’re already there, already invested, and already want this to exist.

A campaign with a deadline will raise more than a page that runs forever. Give your backers a reason to act today, not eventually.

And the money, when it arrives, comes with something more valuable: a community of people who helped build it, who’ll tell others about it, and who’ll come back when you need them again.

Get started

Pride in Place funding: how to set up a match fund

Rebecca Hughes — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 17:20:01 +0100

“To maximise the impact of the Pride in Place Impact Fund and broaden its reach, local authorities are encouraged to explore opportunities to leverage funding and/or seek match funding for initiatives. Where possible, this may help to unlock additional support and accelerate progress on shared priorities for local pride.”
Pride in Place Impact Fund prospectus

This is the government’s own steer, and it is why so many local authorities are exploring new ways of working.

Crowdfunder has been distributing local authority funds as match funding for years, from Community Chest to Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL). With around 200 projects going live every day, we have a whole host of community-led projects that need funding right now.

Delivering a project by offering your funding as a match fund will not only amplify your funding by combining it with contributions from the public and our wider partner network, but also create a transparent, participatory budgeting programme and give local organisations the visibility they need to reach supporters.

Why offer your allocation as match funding

On average, funds on Crowdfunder are amplified by 159%. As your money is only unlocked when someone donates, every pound you put in arrives alongside money from the crowd, so your contribution at least doubles, and often goes much further. Every fund is set up differently, which is why the amplification varies, but the direction is always the same. If your fund is not on the platform, local organisations are left to follow a more isolated grant route, invisible to the network of public supporters and partners looking to help.

It does more than raise money, too. Each fundraiser is public, so the programme becomes a visible show of civic pride that reaches groups who never knew support was there for them. The crowd’s response is a live read on what local people actually want, giving you a participatory budgeting effect without the heavy process. And because you manage the whole thing through one dashboard, with due diligence built in throughout, the admin drops dramatically.

Match funding does not just stretch your funds further, it makes fundraising easier. Our data shows the average donation on Crowdfunder is £40 without a match fund and £70 with one. That is roughly two-thirds more, a clear sign of how powerful the promise of matching is.

How to set up a match fund with Crowdfunder

Setting up a Pride in Place match fund is more straightforward than most councils expect, and we are with you at every step. Just follow these steps:

Identify your pot: with Pride in Place you will be splitting your work into projects, so start by choosing one with strong community participation to put behind a match fund. A small grants fund is the perfect pot, though the possibilities are almost endless: green space regeneration, youth engagement, sport and physical activity, arts and culture, tackling social isolation and more.
Get in touch: reach out to receive a demo of the platform, walk through your options and an indicative programme summary.

Email: cfpartnerships@crowdfunder.co.uk
Present the proposal to your board: a member of our team can dial in if needed to help explain how everything works and how it will boost your funding.
Launch your programme: we will create a branded fund page, eligibility criteria and a custom application form with you.
Review your applications: our automatic matching system cross-references your eligibility criteria with every new project. When there is a match, the project can apply, and everything you need lands straight in your application management dashboard.

From there, simply watch your contribution bring in donations. Each project you support appears on your page, creating a transparent programme the whole community can see. See our current live local authority funds.

What it looks like in practice

The amplification adds up. Over time, the donations your fund unlocks let you support more projects with the same resources, and reach bigger goals than your allocation could on its own. There are thousands of brilliant projects out there. Here are just a few that local authority partners have helped bring to life:

Different places, different needs, held together by local people putting their weight behind something they wanted to see happen, with a council pound helping them get there.

Frequently asked questions

Can Pride in Place funding be used for match funding? Yes. Match funding is not required, but both the Pride in Place Programme and the Impact Fund actively encourage councils to bring in further investment to maximise impact. A match fund is one of the cleanest ways to do that.

How quickly can we get a match fund running? Faster than a traditional grant round. Once you have set your criteria and budget with us, projects can be live and raised within weeks, with vetting and reporting built in from the start.

Does the fund need to be always on? No. You can leave it open all year, as many of our local authority partners do, or run it within a set window. The choice is yours.

How much flexibility do we have? Complete control. You review every application and can set conditions, for example that a project must hit its target, or reach 25 individual supporters, before it receives the funds. You can also cap the amount any one project draws.

Talk to us about your allocation

If your Impact Fund allocation needs to be committed by March 2027, or your Neighbourhood Board is shaping how to spend its Programme funding, the time to design a match fund is now. We would love to show you what your allocation could unlock.

Email us at cfpartnerships@crowdfunder.co.uk

Contact the team

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Councils and local authorities: How to choose your crowdfunding platform

Rebecca Hughes — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 10:32:39 +0100

Not all crowdfunding platforms are built the same way. Here’s why the model behind the platform, not just the features, is what protects your programme long term.

If you’ve never run a crowdfunding programme before, you’re not alone. Plenty of councils and public sector partners are only just discovering what it can do, and the ones who get it right tend to see results that make it hard to imagine going back to funding projects the old way.

In Salford, Salford City Council’s match funding programme has backed projects raising everything from youth employment training to inclusive rugby facilities, drawing in additional funding from Sport England and other partners alongside the crowd. The Eccles RFC Rugby For All campaign raised over £36,000 to improve facilities for women and girls, with Salford City Council and Sport England both contributing alongside hundreds of individual supporters.

So the real question isn’t whether crowdfunding works. It’s: which platform should you be doing it on?

Start with your why

Community crowdfunding has become a serious tool for local authorities and funding partners across the UK. Crowdfunder’s four key benefits are:

Stretches funds further
Reaches new organisations
Engages community-led spending
Helps organisations thrive

Once you know your why, the choice of platform becomes much clearer.

Crowdfunder is built differently

Here’s the key structural difference: Crowdfunder is the only major platform built around collaborative funding. On Crowdfunder, a single project can attract funding from a council match fund, a corporate foundation, a national programme, and the crowd — all contributing to the same campaign at the same time.

This means your fund goes further. Public backing from a council acts as a signal of confidence that draws in funding from other directions too; corporate partners, foundations, and individual supporters who might never have found the project otherwise.

Second, it means the platform itself is more resilient. When funding comes from many directions rather than one institutional relationship, there’s no single point of failure. That’s not a small thing to consider when you’re choosing where to build a long-term public programme.

Crowdfunder has been doing this since 2011. Over £450 million raised. More than 100,000 funded projects. Across local authorities, national foundations, corporate partners, and communities.

Why community groups choose Crowdfunder

This matters for councils too, because the platform a community group prefers to fundraise on shapes who you’ll actually reach.

Crowdfunder is one of the best-known crowdfunding platforms in the UK, which means community groups, charities, and grassroots organisations are already there. You’re not asking people to find a niche platform; you’re meeting them where they’re already raising money.

It’s also built to be genuinely useful to the community groups using it, not just a payment processor. Project owners get access to rewards tools, a knowledge hub of fundraising guidance, and ways for local employers to get involved through employee volunteering and giving schemes. That’s the kind of platform community groups actually want to come back to. Crowdfunder is continually investing in and developing the platform to further help organisations raise funds.

What this means for local authorities specifically

We know times are tough for councils right now. Budgets are under pressure, and every programme has to justify itself. A match funding programme should be part of the answer to that — public money working harder, not a financial risk.

The numbers back this up. Cornwall Council’s average fund amplification is 4x. Plymouth’s is 2.55x. That’s the kind of return that’s hard to get from most public spending decisions.

The right platform partnership should feel like a safe pair of hands: experienced in working with public sector timelines and governance, able to bring in funding from multiple directions, and stable enough to still be there in five years.

Crowdfunder has active programmes with councils and public sector partners across the UK, from Plymouth to Salford, Cornwall to Greater London. We understand procurement, we understand sign-off processes, and we understand that community relationships built through a crowdfunding programme are genuinely valuable and worth protecting.

Crowdfunder Salford

Cornwall Community Fund

Plymouth City Change Fund

Thinking about your options?

Whether you’re setting up a new community crowdfunding programme or reviewing your current one, we’d love to talk.

Get in touch

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Crowdfunder | Stories

A complete guide to crowdfunding for musicians

How to plan, build and run your music crowdfunding project

Quick links

Music and Crowdfunder: the numbers

Why crowdfund?

Planning your campaign

Define exactly what you’re raising for

Work out your target honestly

Choose your funding type

Set your timeline

Line up early support

Develop your story

Building a project page that converts

The top section has to work immediately

Create a short pitch video

Use images and scannable copy

Designing rewards that fans actually want

Prize draws for musicians

Match funding

Promoting your campaign

After the campaign: delivering and building long-term fans

Success stories: how musicians are using Crowdfunder

Ready to start?

Useful links

Why this artist is running a crowdfunder and a prize draw at the same time

The project

Two campaigns, two different jobs

Why it works

The broader point

Why regular donations are an underused tool on Crowdfunder

What regular donations actually do

The number that matters

How to make it work

Give your supporters a way to stay

Match funding, TikToks and more: what we’ve shipped this month

TikToks and YouTube Shorts on your project page

Live password validation

Emojis in projects, rewards and updates

Coming soon

How to run a prize draw for your zoo or wildlife park

Why prize draws work so well for zoos

What makes a great zoo prize draw prize?

How to set up your prize draw on Crowdfunder

The free entry route: what you need to know

Setting your entry price and target

How to promote your prize draw

Picking your winner

Making it repeatable

Retargeting with Meta Pixel

Real zoo prize draws on Crowdfunder

Ready to start?

How to create a great Crowdfunder project page

What makes a good project page?

A real example: Bubble Club

Your aim: one sentence, one breath

Your opening line: lead with conviction, not your organisation

Your story: problem, solution, who benefits

Your video: authentic beats produced

Your funding target: show what the money does

The “why now”: urgency that isn’t manufactured

Social proof: who else believes in this

Your closing line: a direct ask

Rewards: give something back

The details that matter more than you think

Your launch plan: the first 48 hours

Before you go live: the checklist

One last thing

How Sport England turned £6 million into £18.9 million with Crowdfunder

Watch: Sport England on crowdfunding

The challenge

The approach

The results

What it meant for the funded organisations

What made it work

A blueprint for funders

The high street isn’t what it used to be. Communities are taking it back.

What the new high street actually looks like

Why this is happening on Crowdfunder and not somewhere else

You need the people who walk past it every day