NFP Crowdfunding Boom

One of Australia’s newest Not for Profit crowdfunding organisations chuffed.org says it’s delivered over $1million for social cause organisations in its first year of operation.

Launched in October 2013, with the backing of its Founding Partner, The Telstra Foundation, Chuffed.org says it has just hit $1million in donations through the platform.

“We based our financial projections on other fundraising platforms that took anywhere between 15 months to 3 years (or longer) to hit their first million, so we’ve been pleasantly surprised just how quickly the Australian social sector has taken to crowdfunding”, Chuffed.org CEO Prashan Paramanathan said.

“At first it was just the smaller organisations trying out crowdfunding for small $5,000 to $10,000 campaigns. But increasingly we’re seeing mid-sized organisations like OzHarvest and ReachOut.com dabbling with crowdfunding.

“It won’t be long before we see the big $100m+ organisations trying it out too.”

Even though it’s currently focused on Australian organisations, Chuffed.org says it has seen donations come in from 39 countries, even including places as far off as Turkey, Qatar and Latvia.

“The average donation via credit card on the platform has been $87, with the largest single donation at $10,000,” Paramanathan said.

“The largest campaign on the platform so far has been from Edgar’s Mission – a sanctuary for rescued farm animals – who raised $162,458 for their ‘Raising the Roof’ campaign from 1,787 donors in 14 countries. But the record looks set for a challenge.

“As part of our expansion, we’ll be supporting a campaign for a large international organisation, with 10 times the audience of Edgar’s Mission in the coming months. With organisations like that running campaigns, we may just see a million-dollar plus social sector crowdfunding campaign in the near future

Paramanathan said the crowdfunding industry is booming both globally and locally, with the World Bank predicting that it could be funding $96bn of projects per year by 2025.

“While most of the focus has been on creative, tech and product platforms, the Not for Profit sector has also been jumping into crowdfunding at an ever increasing rate.”

One of Australia’s first Not for Profit crowdfunding platforms, mycause,  which was founded in 2007, has so far raised more than $30million for charity.