Kids Company: why our charity turned to crowdfunding to fundraise

The Christmas period can be exceptionally challenging and bleak for the children, young people and vulnerable adults whom we support here at Kids Company.

As we did last year, we are hosting a party on Christmas Day for 4,000 vulnerable children and their families and providing emergency food parcels to another 12,000 people. Back in November, the team behind our Child Poverty Busting Programme told us the number of requests for help this Christmas had increased since last year – the need for food parcels alone was up by a third. We were facing unprecedented need and we had to react quickly.

In response, we launched a crowdfunding campaign because we saw it as an innovative opportunity to raise critical funds with no upfront spend. Like many small charities, we have no media buying budget at Kids Company and a tiny communications team – we are used to having to exploit every free and donated opportunity to within an inch of its life!

We also had little time – a couple of weeks – to turn this around but the Crowdfunder UK team made it easy for us. The platform is very agile and interactive and we could see the potential for creating a community of supporters around our campaign. We were able to easily integrate our existing campaign theme and planned filmed content, which was a big plus. The average pledge on the website is £47, which is considerably higher than other platforms with the same fee.

We knew crowdfunding was being used successfully by individuals and companies in the commercial sector to generate funding for projects and start-ups and we could see the potential for the third sector. We had two reservations. Firstly, it a rewards based model, you give something and get something. In the US, charities have used this mechanism to generate huge sums of money but it was not a given that this would work on a large scale. What-ever happened to giving just for the joy of giving? It all felt a bit un-British!

The other reservation was that traditionally once you set a funding target for crowd funding, you only get the money if you reach it. We wanted to set a big target because we needed the donations but, as this was the first time we had used this platform, we were nervous that if we didn’t reach it we wouldn’t receive anything. Crowdfunder recognised this dilemma and agreed to change the rules and introduce flexible funding so that we would be guaranteed to receive whatever we had raised before Christmas. In the end we decided it was worth having a go.

Our target is £100,000 and we have so far reached £82,501. It has allowed us to reach out to different audiences and grow our supporter base. We found that we were able to have more effective and engaging communication with our donors. By embracing innovative technology and by diversifying our funding streams through multiple digital platforms, we expect to increase our fundraising capacity and generate much needed income to meet the needs of our vulnerable young clients. We will definitely use crowdfunding again.

Jane Caldwell is director of public engagement at Kids Company

For more news, opinions and ideas about the voluntary sector, join our community – it’s free!