Crowdfunding raises money by putting the people closest to a cause in charge of raising it. Each owner runs their own project page, and your central team provides the platform, the guidance and the support that make them effective. A student society raising for a tour, a research group funding a piece of equipment, a department backing a hardship fund: each owns its appeal, sets its target, and goes out to its own network. Your office sets the framework, vets the projects, supplies the tools and templates, and runs light coordinating communications. The crowd does the rest.

That ownership is what sets crowdfunding apart from your fixed-moment campaigns. A Giving Day is a roughly 36-hour, centrally led push for a handful of institutional priorities, where your team writes the appeal and owns the ask. A Challenge Week sits in between: development-office-led like a Giving Day, but the money goes to clubs and societies who do their own promotion across about a week. Crowdfunding takes that project-owner model and removes the calendar box around it. Projects launch when their owners are ready, run for as long as suits the cause, and live alongside one another all year. Put simply, crowdfunding is year-round, a Giving Day happens in about 36 hours, and a Challenge Week is a week.

This guide draws on best practice developed by Hubbub's consultants, who have helped institutions build crowdfunding programmes, and on the experience of universities who have run them at scale. Two feature throughout: the University of Essex, whose long-running "Click" programme supplies most of the worked examples, and the University of York. It is honest about one thing from the outset. Crowdfunding is as much about building a culture of giving as it is about the money it raises. Done well, it brings brand-new supporters into your programme, teaches a generation of project owners how philanthropy actually works, and gives you a steady stream of fundable, donor-friendly causes.

Working templates. Sign in to download our crowdfunding project plan template, page copy template and communications plan template.

Why run a crowdfunding campaign

The first reason is reach. Project owners go to people you would never find on your alumni file: course mates, teammates, parents, friends, colleagues and local supporters who give because they have a personal connection to the person making the ask. A conventional appeal rarely surfaces these donors, and once they have given they can be stewarded towards your wider programme. York's crowdfunding has done exactly this, widening its supporter base so that, in the figures it reports, around 91 per cent of its crowdfunding alumni donors were new to the institution.

The second reason is that crowdfunding builds fundraisers. A student who has to write their own case for support, map their own audience and chase their own donations learns what fundraising really involves. DeeDee Paul, Senior Philanthropy Officer at the University of Essex, describes the effect of the Click programme on students:

"It teaches the students about philanthropy. It teaches staff about philanthropy, because oftentimes people think, oh, you just get money just to get money. They don't see the actual background work that goes into it. It's a good way for the university to teach people about philanthropy as a student, before they become an alumni."

DeeDee Paul, University of Essex

The third reason is that crowdfunding takes pressure off the rest of your fundraising. Every department, society and research team that can run a credible self-serve appeal is one fewer ask landing on your major-gift officers' desks. As DeeDee Paul puts it, when departments use the platform with their own contacts, "all we do is monitor it and give you your money at the end of it," which frees the major-gift team "to focus on something else." Income is a genuine benefit, and at scale a real one: Essex's Click programme has raised more than £256,000 from over 4,590 donors across 320-plus projects since 2015. But the income tends to follow from the engagement, not the other way round.

One campaign or an ongoing programme

There are two ways to run crowdfunding, and it pays to decide early which you are building. A single campaign is a time-boxed push: you recruit a cohort of projects, launch them around a shared moment, and wrap up. This is the closest crowdfunding gets to a Challenge Week, and a sensible way to prove the model before committing to more. An ongoing programme keeps the platform open all year, with projects launching and finishing on a rolling basis as owners come forward. This is how Essex runs Click and how York runs its YuStart programme, both operating continuously for years rather than in bursts.

The trade-off is momentum versus convenience. A single campaign concentrates attention, which makes communications easier and competition livelier, but it asks every project to be ready at the same time. An ongoing programme meets owners when they are ready and spreads your support effort across the year, but it loses the shared urgency of a deadline, so you have to manufacture momentum project by project. Many institutions do both: a year-round programme as the backbone, with occasional concentrated campaigns or a Challenge Week layered on top to create peaks. If you are starting from nothing, begin with one well-supported campaign or a small cohort, learn from it, and grow.

Choosing and vetting projects and project owners

The quality of your crowdfunding rests on the quality of the projects you let onto the platform, so you need clear criteria and someone who applies them. At Essex, prospective owners submit an inquiry, and a dedicated team member reviews each one against the programme's rules before it goes live. Two criteria do most of the work. First, the project has to fit your mission: Essex requires every Click project to be tied to the owner's academic purpose, whether a course-linked trip, a piece of research or a study-abroad placement. Second, the project has to be worth the effort. Essex sets a floor of at least £100 to launch, on the simple logic that, as DeeDee Paul puts it, a tiny target is "a waste of time" for both the owner and the team supporting them: "We want to make sure that if you're going to invest your time, it's invested well."

Vetting the owner matters as much as vetting the project, because the single biggest predictor of success is whether the person behind it will do the work. Essex has run more than 445 projects at a 98 per cent success rate, and the team is candid about why their one failure happened:

"We just had our first failed project. The only reason why it fails is because the person didn't even put any effort into trying to fundraise for it."

DeeDee Paul, University of Essex

You cannot make someone a fundraiser. What you can do is set expectations clearly at the point of sign-off and screen out projects where the owner is hoping the money will arrive by itself. A short conversation before approval, walking the owner through what they are committing to, is worth far more than a long application form. Our crowdfunding project plan template gives owners a structured place to set out their goal, audience and plan, and gives you a clear basis on which to approve.

Building a compelling project page and telling the story

A project page has one job: to turn a visitor who cares about the person into a donor who gives to the cause. The mechanics matter, and a good platform handles them: a clear target and progress bar, a range of suggested gift amounts rather than a single fixed figure, Gift Aid capture, and a choice of one-off, card and recurring options so people can give in the way that suits them. Essex deliberately offered several giving routes and a spread of amounts so as not to deter anyone, setting suggested levels but always leaving the donor free to give what they can. In DeeDee Paul's words, "every donation makes a difference."

The harder part is the story, and it is where owners need the most help. The temptation, as DeeDee Paul warns, is to fall back on the institutional ask: "You don't want to be like, oh, just donate because of scholarships or because we need money. You want to tell the stories." A strong page opens with a person and a specific need, shows what the money will buy in concrete terms, and makes the reader feel that their gift completes something rather than topping up a general fund. Encourage owners to write as themselves, in their own voice, with their own photographs, and to say plainly what happens if the target is met.

The donations that result often carry their own stories back to you. Essex's platform lets donors leave a message with their gift, and those messages have become a fundraising asset in their own right, used in campaigns and at scholarship receptions. One donor who gave £30,000 in memory of her late husband, an Essex graduate the office had never previously been in contact with, left a message explaining that she wanted "to leave a legacy" because the university had made such an impact on his life. Give owners a head start on their words with our page copy template, and point them at the free Fundraising Copy Checker to sharpen the result.

Setting targets and using rewards

A good target is realistic, motivating and anchored in something tangible. Help owners price their project from the bottom up, around the equipment, the travel or the activity it pays for, rather than picking a round number and hoping. A target tied to a concrete outcome is far easier to fundraise against, because every donor can see exactly what their gift completes, and a target the owner can plausibly hit with their own network is one they will actually pursue.

How the target behaves when it is reached is a design decision in itself. Some programmes run on an all-or-nothing basis, where the owner keeps the money only if the target is met, which sharpens the final push but raises the stakes. Others, like Essex, release the funds once the minimum is reached and let owners keep anything above it: "Once you reach your minimum goal, sometimes people go over the goal. Either way, you still get the match funding as long as you reach the minimum goal." Whichever you choose, be explicit about it on every page so donors and owners know the rules.

Rewards are an optional layer that can lift conversion when they fit the cause. In the classic crowdfunding model, donors at different levels receive a small token of thanks: a mention, an invitation, a piece of the thing they funded. In a cause-led setting the most powerful "reward" is often simply impact and acknowledgement, a heartfelt update and a thank-you, rather than merchandise that eats into the money raised. Keep rewards cheap to fulfil, genuinely tied to the project, and never let them become the reason people give.

Match funding to drive urgency

Match funding is the single most effective lever you have, because it changes the maths of the ask for every donor: give now and your pound counts double. York reports that its matched projects raise around three times as much as unmatched ones, which is reason enough to build a match pot into your programme from the start. The match can come from central funds already earmarked to support the kinds of projects you are crowdfunding, or from major donors and corporate partners solicited specifically to create a challenge fund.

How you structure the match shapes behaviour. Essex offers a straightforward pledge to match what each project raises up to £500, which gives owners a clear, motivating headline: hit the minimum and the institution tops you up. That cap also keeps the pot fair across many projects rather than letting a single large campaign absorb it. Be aware, though, of the behaviour match can encourage at the margins. Essex notes that some owners lean on a guaranteed source close to home, knowing that "if I raise the minimum amount, then I'll get the match funding," whereas the owners who genuinely work their networks tend to be halfway to target well before the deadline. A match designed to reward breadth of support, rather than simply reaching a number, keeps the incentive pointing the right way. Plan the mechanics with our communications plan template, which includes a place to map each match trigger to the message that announces it.

Communications: owner-led, centrally supported

Crowdfunding communications run on two tracks that have to stay in step. The primary track is the owner's own outreach to their own people, and it is where most of the money comes from. The secondary track is your central amplification: institutional social posts, newsletters and emails that lend credibility, drive traffic to live projects and celebrate milestones. The owners carry the appeal; you carry the megaphone.

On the owner side, the job is to equip and then to nudge. Most project owners are not fundraisers, so give them a simple promotion plan to follow: a launch message to their close network, regular authentic updates through the project, and a final push as the deadline nears. Encourage personal, specific content, photos, short videos and progress posts, rather than polished marketing. Above all, build in active follow-up, because the difference between a funded project and a failed one is often just persistence. Essex does not leave owners to sink or swim. The team checks in roughly a week after a project goes live to ask, in DeeDee Paul's words, "are you actually actively trying to get the money in?", and if an owner has stalled, they "sit down with you and figure out an alternative way." She describes the touch as supportive rather than controlling: "I don't want to say micromanaging you, but at least keeping you motivated to do your project until the end."

On the central side, the lightest-touch version is awareness and routing: making sure everyone knows the platform exists and where to find it. Essex publicises Click with banners across campus, welcome-week stalls and start-of-term sessions for the departments that use it most, but its most powerful channel is word of mouth, because a programme that has run for years becomes the obvious first port of call: "If you need money, you can just check out the Click platform." For a concentrated campaign rather than a rolling programme, lift the central effort to roughly one coordinated email a day, and write everything before it begins so delivery is calm rather than frantic. Hubbub's how-to guides go deeper on email and social.

Launch and maintaining momentum

A project's first 48 hours set its trajectory, so coach owners to line up their warmest supporters to give early. A page that already shows momentum, with several gifts and visible progress, reassures later donors that the project is real and worth backing, whereas an empty page invites hesitation. Encourage owners to tell their inner circle the launch date in advance and ask them to give on day one, so the page opens with movement rather than silence.

Through the middle of a project, momentum is a job, not an accident. Owners should post progress, thank donors publicly, mark the halfway point, and create fresh reasons to give: a match milestone unlocked, a deadline approaching, a stretch goal in sight. For a concentrated campaign, keep a visible leaderboard or progress view and use it to spark friendly competition between projects. For a rolling programme, your central team's role is to keep momentum alive project by project, spotlighting live appeals, celebrating successes publicly and prompting owners who go quiet. The through-line in everything Essex describes is the same: the projects that succeed are the ones whose owners keep working them, and your support exists to keep that work going.

Stewardship and converting crowdfunding donors

What happens after a project funds determines whether you have run a transaction or started a relationship. Both the owner and the central office should thank every donor promptly, and owners should report back on what the money achieved: the trip taken, the show staged, the equipment bought. At Essex, the projects with the strongest ongoing relationship, such as the theatre school, are the ones that close the loop, inviting the team to performances and reporting back on impact. That habit of feedback is what turns a one-off donor into a familiar supporter.

The bigger prize is conversion. Crowdfunding brings in large numbers of people who are new to you, and a good platform captures, with consent, who they are and what they cared about, so you can build on the gift. Essex uses the donation data and the messages donors leave to re-engage supporters it would otherwise never have known: when a gift arrives from someone outside the regular file, the team can reach out, thank them and ask what motivated them. Over time, even the project owners convert. Now that it tracks the data, Essex has found that a share of former Click users have themselves become alumni donors, names that have quietly kept giving since they graduated. That long arc, from student fundraiser to lifelong supporter, is the real return on a crowdfunding programme, and it only materialises if you steward deliberately rather than letting projects end at their deadline. Be honest about the resource this takes: Essex is frank that without a dedicated stewardship role, follow-up across every project is hard to sustain, which is an argument for staffing the programme properly as it grows.

Measuring success

Set your measures before you launch, and lead with engagement rather than income alone. The most useful metrics are the number of live projects, the project success rate (the share that hit target), the number of donors and how many are new to you, the total raised and the average per project, and, over the longer term, how many crowdfunding donors and owners go on to give again. Benchmark numbers from established programmes give you something to aim at: Essex reports a 98 per cent success rate across 445-plus projects, and York a 94 per cent rate across 240-plus projects. A high success rate is itself a measure of how well you are vetting and supporting, not just of how easy the targets are. Track new-donor acquisition and downstream conversion as seriously as you track pounds, because that is where crowdfunding pays off long after a given project closes.

Case study: the University of Essex

The University of Essex has run its crowdfunding programme, branded "Click" on the strapline "help is only a Click away," since 2015. It is now a mature, year-round operation: more than 320 projects supported, over £256,000 raised and more than 4,590 donors over its lifetime, and a 2017 Heist Award for Best Alumni, Development or Fundraising Initiative along the way. In its first year alone the programme delivered 38 projects, £48,000 and 791 donors at a 97 per cent success rate. The model is self-serve but closely supported: students and staff submit an inquiry, a dedicated team member reviews it against the academic criteria, and approved projects go live with a target, a match of up to £500 and active follow-up. Across more than 445 projects the programme has held a 98 per cent success rate, with its single failure down to an owner who simply did not do the work.

What Essex stresses most, with hindsight, is not the mechanics but the fit. Asked for her top advice to teams thinking about crowdfunding, DeeDee Paul keeps returning to the same point:

"You have to know your audience. Your audience is what's going to make it successful. You could have the amazing platform, but if people don't really care about this kind of thing, it's not going to work. So once you know the demographic you're targeting, it's easy to go for it."

DeeDee Paul, University of Essex

That fit, plus dedicated support for project owners and disciplined use of the data that giving generates, is what has turned Click from a new idea into a fixture of how Essex raises money. York's YuStart programme points the same way, helping turn York, in its own phrase, into "a fundraising university, rather than a university that fundraises."

Frequently asked questions

How is crowdfunding different from a Giving Day or a Challenge Week? All three are project-or-priority-led appeals, but the timeframe and ownership differ. A Giving Day is a roughly 36-hour, centrally led push for institutional priorities. A Challenge Week is development-office-led but the money goes to clubs and societies, run over about a week. Crowdfunding is year-round and led by the project owners themselves, with your team providing the platform and support.

Should we run a single campaign or an ongoing programme? Either works. A single, time-boxed campaign concentrates attention and is a low-risk way to prove the model. An ongoing programme, like the ones Essex and York run, keeps the platform open all year and meets owners when they are ready. Many institutions run a year-round programme with occasional concentrated peaks layered on top. If you are starting out, start small and grow.

How do we stop projects from failing? Vet the owner, not just the project, and support them through it. The biggest predictor of failure is an owner who will not do the work, so set expectations clearly before approval and screen out projects relying on the money arriving by itself. Then follow up actively: check in early, and help any owner who has stalled find a way forward. Essex's 98 per cent success rate rests on exactly this kind of hands-on support.

Where does the match funding come from, and how much should it be? Often from central funds already earmarked to support the kinds of projects you are crowdfunding, or from major-donor and corporate gifts solicited to create a challenge fund. A clear, capped match works well: Essex matches each project up to £500, which keeps the pot fair across many projects. Match is worth prioritising, because matched projects can raise several times more than unmatched ones.

How long should a project run? Long enough to build momentum but short enough to keep urgency: a few weeks is typical. A deadline that is too far off invites procrastination, while too tight a window leaves no room to recover a slow start. Make the deadline visible on the page and use it to drive the final push.

Is Gift Aid available on crowdfunding gifts? Yes, on eligible donations from UK taxpayers, and a good platform captures the declaration at the point of giving so you reclaim it automatically. Make sure owners know Gift Aid adds 25 per cent to qualifying gifts at no cost to the donor, and that they mention it in their ask.

Members' resource pack

Tools

Hubbub's Giving Day Simulator: model likely results before you commit to a target
Fundraising Copy Checker: sharpen your appeal and email copy
QR Code Generator: link in-person moments straight to a donation page

How to run a crowdfunding campaign