NFPs Can ‘Ask the Crowd’
10 April 2014 at 11:36 am
A Melbourne entrepreneur has developed an online crowdsourcing service allowing Not for Profits and others to “ask the crowd” for their opinions and ideas to deliver almost immediate responses.
AnswerCrowd is the brainchild of founder and CEO Daniel Martin who said he was taking crowdsourcing to the next level to answer some of the questions many Not for Profits were keen to hear the answers to.
Launched in Melbourne in December, Martin said Australia’s first crowdsourced brand research platform provides a modern online focus group, delivering faster, cheaper and higher quality results than those received using traditional focus group methods that could take weeks.
“It means decision makers can step outside the boardroom to brainstorm with everyday people,” Martin said.
He said questions around the most preferred fundraising means or even selecting charity ambassadors could greatly assist Australian Not for Profits, and getting timely and high-quality responses could open the floodgates to new ideas for charities to raise money.
The questions are sent to a tailored sample of respondents from the AnswerCrowd’s Australian database, who have a set period of time to respond depending on questioner’s needs.
Pricing is linked to the number of answers a Not for Profit wants to receive: from $5 per crowd member per answer for more than 50 answers.
“Put simply, organisations have the ability to ask a single open-ended question to the crowd, targeting any demographic they choose,” he said. “They can then ask follow-on questions to that question once they’ve learnt something from the first question.”
Consumers, who sign up through the AnswerCrowd website are rewarded for their answers with either dollar-for-dollar gift cards or pre-paid debit cards.
Martin said the aim also was to attract high net worth individuals to the site who might be interested in providing answers to Not for Profit questions but don’t want or need the payment incentives.
“We are planning to build in a redemption component so that the participants can donate their ‘credits’ back to the charities profiled on the website,” he said.
Martin said he had held discussions with a number of high-profile Not for Profits to gauge the sort of questions that would best suit them and engage possible donors or supporters.
“Our own research tells us that while people are given financial incentives to take part they really care the information they provide to organisations,” he said.
“The responses to charities are ‘from the heart’ and this generates a new context for powerful outcomes.
“Crowdsourcing is not new – customer feedback has been around for centuries – but the rise of social media has given consumers a real voice and organisations now realise that the ‘crowd’ is powerful, intelligent, useful and immediate.”
