The pressures and strains of convincing everyone you know and anyone who will listen to give you money for a good cause.
If you would have told me in the middle of May that I would be writing a blog post about how I successfully raised the ten thousand euro in six weeks, I would have probably and most dramatically cried with joy. I made the decision in March to do an online fundraising campaign, having seen how receptive modern donators were to the likes of Kickstarter.
What I needed was a catchy video to go viral, that not only explained the project but also made it look like a 'no brainer' to get behind. I got in touch with a videographer I knew from Waterford, Shane Crotty, and he was 100% on board. With that we took to Cork filming old schools of mine, art studios where the books illustrators worked and local libraries. Shane spent two tireless weeks choreographing, filming and editing the video until we had a wonderfully chirpy, emotionally manipulating, 3 minute plea for money!
“We got two children, from our target market age group, to scrutinise the book themes and give us their feedback. ”
Once the video was formed it was a matter of choosing a funding group to work with. This was my first mistake in the series. Having been to one conference I went with the first group I'd been exposed to. This was Fund:It Ireland. Now to many i'm sure they are a great team with endless support. However I was unfortunate to not have much help or any positive reinforcement from them. Irregardless, I went with them, setting my target amount at 10,000. This initially seemed very high but when I weighed up the cost of self-publishing and printing, including the cost of the prizes I had to give people for donating, it ended up being very reasonable. The main thing I was trying to achieve is cover all the costs of production so that the profits can be 100% for charity.
So began six weeks of emailing, calling, texting and reaching out to everyone I knew on social media to even contribute a few euro. I immediately had the family throw quite a bit of cash at it just for moral support and the first thousand came in a week. This relaxed me until I realised even if I went at a thousand a week I'd still never make ten in the prescribed time. So then came the printing of proposals and going school to school in Cork hoping the kids could do fundraisers. No luck, it was too late in the school year. I realised now a fundraiser was needed. So I organised an event in a local bar with live music, raffle prizes and speeches from Charity Fundraisers we were working with. Unfortunately, that fundraiser made a small profit vs. the amount I put into organising it. I had to rely on messaging absolutely everyone I knew and appealing to their best side. This worked. Contacting everyone and I mean everyone on my facebook, individually with a personalised appeal to donate even ten euro. This brought me up to 7,000 euro. I still needed 3,000 and there was no one left to convince. I needed a large donor and fast. I contacted my old boss and he sat through my proposal, questioned my objectives, abilities and scrutinised the business model until finally agreeing to be our silent benefactor.
Three days before the deadline, I received the final 3,000euro. I was at work at the time and hadn't checked my phone. When I had a minute to look I had 7 missed calls from friends and family and one text message from our donor saying "Money pledged- now go shout". I went out the back of the building and jumped up and down screaming with relief. This was actually going to happen.