Thankyou Pay-What-You-Want Campaign Raises $1.4M

Thankyou raised $1.4 million through sales from its pay-what-you-want crowdfunding campaign for the Chapter One book that tells the story behind the social enterprise.

Founder Daniel Flynn said said the pay-what-you-want initiative was a way for Thankyou to stand out, and achieve greater impact than through traditional sales.

“We were really looking at the whole book market and trying to think about cut-through,” Flynn said.

“The thing about pay-what-you-want and this campaign, we’re not asking people to buy a book, we’re asking them to contribute to the future.

“And the question is, why limit that contribution? And also challenge people, what do you want to contribute? And for some people it might only be 10 bucks because that’s all they can afford, for others it might be $10,000.

“But we wanted to put the power of the decision in people’s hands, rather than say, this is what you must contribute to be part of our future.”  

He said that the majority of books sold for more than its retail value.

“Online sales, which is where we got a majority of sales during the campaign, reached $38 to $40 a book, which is well above retail price,” he said.

“At a store level the average ended up being around the $18 to $19 mark, and that was a phenomenal result still, but the book will move to a RRP of $24.95 at some point.

“Our in-store sales were a bit lower and some of our online sales were higher, but it was cool to see that even in store some people paid up to $500 for the book.”  

To run a successful pay-what-you-want campaign, Flynn said the call to action must be communicated effectively.

“I think the why is important, people need to know why it’s pay-what-you-want and what the contribution is,” he said.

“Our example would be people who bought it at a store level… and didn’t understand the why behind the book didn’t pay as much as those who knew, after watching a video online.

“So your call to action to pay-what-you-want needs to be backed up by pretty strong and clear why, otherwise you may not get much money for what you’re selling or what you’re doing.

“I think it all comes down to communication, that’s the number one key with pay-what-you-want.”

Of the money from the campaign, $600,000 was allocated to the launch of the Thankyou Baby range, and $600,000 was assigned to enterprise’s launch in New Zealand later this year.

“The money left over from that, that’s just in the account, it’s still gradually building, we’re still getting sales every day on the book, and that is going to the next venture,” Flynn said.

“We’re not announcing that one until we’ve launched Baby and New Zealand, because we want to take it that one step at a time.
“But there is a third, fourth, fifth thing and we have many dreams for the future at Thankyou, and we see this book as a product that can fund the future of Thankyou long-term.”