Dawkins founded crowdfunding platform StartSomeGood.com, which has raised close to $500,000 for social impact projects.
He founded Vibewire in 2000 and opened Sydney’s first co-working space, now the Vibewire Hub, in 2006.
Dawkins prefers to call his style of crowdfunding ‘peerfunding’ and has spoken previously on the topic, providing some valuable practical advice, such as explaining the importance of written thank you notes to supporters rather than emails or Facebook mentions.
Here is a longer-form version of Dawkins’ crowdfunding tips:
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He also kindly answered some of StartupSmart’s questions:
Seeing the impact it was having in the arts and the opportunity that was being given to creative entrepreneurs I wanted to create the same opportunity for social entrepreneurs.
The very first time I was invited by a friend to support their fundraiser on Kickstarter in 2009 I knew it was significant.
Some of the projects which raised money on StartSomeGood which I’m really proud of are the Do Good Bus, who raised $101,000 for a national tour; Kinyei, a social enterprise cafe in Cambodia, who raised $18,000 to expand their operations; GalliGalli, who are doing really interesting things with mapping technologies in Nepal; and Vibewire, who raised funds to offer scholarships to social entrepreneurs to use their co-working space in Sydney.
The thinking was to provide social and ethically-motivated entrepreneurs with a fundraising platform built specifically for their needs.
Our site has a unique spin on crowdfunding designed for social enterprises and causes and people are responding really well to it. We’re happy with our progress so far and excited to work with many more ventures over the coming months and years.
It’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out in terms of niches.
Right now you have three levels – the completely generalist sites, like IndieGoGo, the broad-niche sites, like Pozible (creative), Kickstarter (creative) and us (social good) and then the tight-niche sites, like unbound for book publishing and Greenhelper for environmental projects.
I think when people create a unique spin and focus on a community with specific needs and interests – such as unbound with books – there’s a lot of potential in niche crowdfunding sites.
We like where we sit: we have a clear mission to support social impact initiatives but we’re very open in terms of how that impact is achieved.
Crowdfunding is very strong in Australia.
Pozible are a leading site for creative projects and we are aiming to be the world’s leading crowdfunding site for social ventures and we’re very proud to be half-Australian (half our team and my co-founder are in the US).
Both of us are growing strongly and I think that will continue. There’s a huge amount of creativity to unleash in Australia.
Focus on cultivating your initial community of champions, who will chip in early and spread the word about your projects.
Early momentum is critical for success, so be ready to create this the moment you go live.
And be realistic – successful crowdfunding is hard work! Only do it if you are able to commit to the effort.
