When Jennifer first heard about Conservation Canines, a group that trains rescued dogs to sniff out wildlife scat samples, she knew that it could help uncover a lot of new and exciting data for her jaguar conservation research.

Enter: Experiment - which Jennifer decided to try out as a way to help cover the cost of working with Conservation Canines - with the bonus of elevating her cause to a large audience.

A strong start

Jennifer relied on a combination of strategies for her successful first crowdfunding attempt. She needed her community before the launch, focused on a consistent schedule of awesome visual content for social media, and then incorporated a matched funding incentive as the campaign approached the final stretch. All of it worked magically to help get the project underway.

Content - Powered by Facebook

Almost all crowdfunding campaigns follow a typical breakdown into three phases: the start, the long push, and the finish. This campaign started off like many others - with a positive rush of commitments from Jennifer's immediate network. By the end of the first day, the project had 10% of the funding locked-in with a 70% conversion rate. In other words, 70% of people who viewed the project page ended up funding the project.

The three biggest peaks in traffic and funding activity came with using the Conservation Canines Facebook group to share great bits of content to a large audience. Here's a sample of just some of the posts they shared.

The next three weeks involved a consistent stream of creative content posted via Jennifer's personal and the Conservation Canines pages. The message here was focused on the various canines she works with in her day-to-day research. Expertly trained guide dogs working as scientific sidekicks to sniff out jaguar tracks is a great topic to share on Facebook. Roughly 40% of her Experiment page traffic was referred directly from Facebook.

Complementing the canine spotlight posts, Jennifer also posted many updates explaining the scientific elements of her research. She discussed the significance of scats in conservation research, as well as how it would be used in the context of her research in Mexico for jaguars.

Like most other crowdfunding campaigns this middle period was also the most challenging part of the campaign. Even though donations slowed, Jennifer and the Conservation Canines team stuck to their content schedule, and kept producing content that rounded out the full story of her research question.



Matching Funds Incentive

It was also the first time an Experiment project tested private-matched funding as an incentive for backers. With about 10 days remaining, the team was able to secure matching donations for the project (two $1,000 donations). The match was publicly announced through a lab note, and helped carry the campaign to the finish line four days ahead of schedule!

Key Takeaways

  1. Have as much content available to share often as possible.
  2. Matching funds can help bring a sense of excitement (and eyeballs) to your project.
  3. Align yourself with allies and organizations that can support the spirit of your work.

The Researchers

Quick Stats

  • $10,246 raised
  • $170 pledged per day
  • 149 backers
  • 5,187 pageviews
  • 52 traffic sources