As discussed above, a well-organized launch event can help bring in a lot of donations right away and also get people talking. The more people talk to their friends about your campaign, the better!

Launching your campaign is a great time to some media attention. Pitch the media on the exciting elements of your campaign and why it’s newsworthy. Another reason reporters might cover you is if you’ve raised a lot of money in the first few days. Another reason to get out there and raise donations early!

Social media is going to become your best friend during the 6 weeks of the campaign! Starting with a strong push on all the social media channels is very helpful. One great strategy is to create a facebook page just for your campaign. Another strategy is to create a facebook event that you invite all your friends to so you can keep them updated on the campaign through daily updates. Paid promotions on facebook are also very useful to get your updates in front of lots of people. Also, when you like a post, comment on a post, or share a post, the Facebook algorithm will decide that it is popular content and will show it to more people. Therefore make sure you and your Solar Champion teammates and your friends and family are actively liking, commenting, and sharing your posts. And of course, always remember to put a link to the campaign page in your social media posts!

In our experience a short personalized email with a link to your campaign page is the best tool you have in your tool box. Think about it. If you saw a post on facebook from a friend you can ignore it. If you got a mass email you can ignore it. But if a friend of yours writes you a personalized email, you’re much more likely to take a look, right? Here’s an example email.

Example Email:
Subject: solar crowdfunding campaign
Hi [recipient],
How are you? I hope all is well! I wanted to let you know about a really cool project I’m working on as a volunteer Solar Champion for RE-volv, a solar energy nonprofit. My team and I just launched a crowdfunding campaign to install a solar energy system on [name of nonprofit]. The solar project will save them 15% on their electric bills and through RE-volv’s pay-it-forward model, donors get repaid and are able to reinvest the money in other nonprofit solar projects! It’s a really cool model. I think you’ll really like it!

You can check out the campaign here: [link]. I hope you’ll consider supporting us by making a donation! No amount is too small! If you have any questions, I’d be happy to talk to you more about it. I’d also appreciate it very much if you could help us spread the word about this campaign.
All the best,
[sender]