The Christian Culture Center is opening a brand new service called the Community Funding Initiative. This new way of resourcing Christian projects lets the community decide which projects they want to see completed. It preempts the normal time and labor-intensive method of applying for grants to foundations that already receive more grant applications than they can service.
Community funding is also called crowd funding and crowd sourcing. The Christian Culture Center is seeking Christians who have projects that need from $500 to $15,000 to complete and who live in the United States. We will expand this offering to the United Kingdom after the initial launch, so if you live in the UK, stay tuned!
Here’s how it works. You submit your project to the Christian Culture Center for approval. Please read the guidelines here first. You’ll complete a project description with at least one project image and preferably one video that explains what you want to do and how it benefits people. Upon approval, you’ll list one or more gifts you can give in exchange for people’s contributions to your project. Typically, people offer different gifts for different levels of donations. A $20 gift is the most common, but people also contribute at higher levels. It’s good to offer gifts at $20, $30, $50, $100 and even higher, depending on the project.
When you’ve reached funding goal, the money is collected and distributed to you, at which time you distribute the gifts you’ve promised to your contributors. Most projects are offered for 30 or 60 days. If the funding goal is not reached, no money is collected and no funds are distributed. Future articles will discuss the best practices for posting projects that get funded.
What Types of Projects Get Community Funded the Most?
If you’re thinking of submitting a project for community funding, you may want to know which types of projects get funded the most.
Typically, projects that get funded the most include writing books, recording music CDs, producing min-budget movies and documentaries, and other creative works. Other types of community funding projects include games, software and phone apps, and even physical products. Keep in mind that if you are promoting physical products they have to be your own original product that is under development when you list the project.
Although this is a secular list, you can get some great ideas by looking at this list on Wikipedia. These are higher-level crowd funded projects, but you can get an idea of what works.
We’re looking for projects that help accomplish our mission: to help increase the impact of Christ in culture. Keep that in mind when you submit your project idea. We also do some preliminary vetting to make sure the project is legitimate and the people who are promoting it are honest and trustworthy. We follow up to make sure the funds collected were used as indicated in the project description itself.
Get Your Project Funded!
Do you have a project you’d like to have community funded? Contact us here.
Speak with other Christians you know and let them know at the Christian Culture Center’s Community Funding Initiative is available to help them.
Community Funding Works
Community funding is a viable means to raise money from the Christian community. The Christian Culture Center will work with you to let as many people as we can know about your project. We’ll also help you pick the gifts you can give in return for donations at their various levels.
If you would like to brainstorm project ideas, or you already have a project you’d like to offer to the Christian community, contact the Christian Culture Center Community Funding Initiative here. We’re here to help.
April 20 is the launch date for The Community Funding Initiative.