I raised $11,000 on indiegogo this summer for surgery. I had my employer ( a popular NYC thrift store ) sponsor the campaign, offering gift cards as incentives. I also had artists in my community contribute to the incentives I was offering.
The success was due to visibility. You have to treat it like a job, and spend real time each day working on it for the month or two you're running it.
Send personalized letters to every single person you know on Facebook or email etc. also, I contacted local blogs and newspapers in NYC and got my story covered by a women's interest website, from where the story was picked up by xojane and other feminist sites.
People don't donate on the 1st or 2nd view - they have to be asked 3 or 4 times. And even then - I made so much but only a tiny fraction of my visitors contributed.
I got tons of supportive messages, and some letters saying I am a man and a liar and thief.
Really you need to have a well designed campaign aesthetically, you have to has photo video and written updates - one every day - you need to have your story written about and get it featured by several blogs and not just 1 time. For instance, even huffington post featuring your campaign will get lots f views but probably only a handful of donations. People need to see it AGAIN.
It's hard but I did manage to raise a ton of money. A woman I know raised $30k this way last year.
Asking for help is hard to do and anyoe who thinks this is an embarrassing or shameful way to pay for SRS has very different ethical perspectives than I do.
Surgery is a medical necessity that our first world country denies and refuses to provide access to. The surgeons specializing in this work have prohibitive fees and there's so few avenues for us to get this care.
Anyway if you're going to try - don't just throw it together. Take your time. Announce yor campaign a week BEFORE you launch it - you need to get awareness started and interest abuzz. Do video. Write to blogs - all of them - and do so NOW. Don't launch until you have a game plan.
You need features and updates and events planned around this and you need them launching every week of the campaign. So draw up a map.
Indiegogo has an algorithm to determine who gets featured on their main page and in their email newsletters and blogs. This is based on the updates you do on the site, donations made, page views...the most active campaigns naturally rise in their system and you get a featurd spot. They don't pick and choose who gets featured.
Get your campaign pretty and organized, get it concise and official. Research other people's campaigns and see what they did. Copy them. Once all that's set - it's really totally depend t on the visibility and networking and coverage.
Send the personal emails to everyone you know - and send them 3 times. Most people will donate that way but not until you've asked /personally/ three times. I made $1,500 in one night just from emailing my Facebook friends.
Facebook disabled my account because I was sending so many messages in such a short time! So plan this beforehand. It seriously inhibited my ability to network within my friend group and it happens halfway through my campaign and impeded my work. You can send an email to Facebook accounts. So find the Facebook email of your friends, and contact that email through your own email not through fbook.
You need to do this all BEFORE you launch the campaign, otherwise you will be spending precious time trying to figure out clever ways to make More money and get visibility - but if you think of most of those clever ways before hand that will be way better.
Anyway this is what I've learned and I hope you found it helpful. I didn't reach my goal but the campaign changed my life - I just used the mlney I made to fund another procedure that is just as important to me as SRS and also $11,000.
Good luck and feel free to ask if you have ahh questions.
Di
