What is a campaign?

A campaign is a fan’s pitch to shape the future of something they’re passionate about. This pitch should lay out a clear, tangible goal for the Creator that other Fans can rally around and support with their own financial pledges.

Enter the Central Players

Founders start campaigns→Fans support campaigns→Creators receive the money and deliver the goods→Charities benefit!   

Founders are the creative spark behind the campaign idea, the Fans working to bring it to life. You can check out their profile and FanCred at the top of every campaign.

Fans are generous folks who pledge money and support to entice creators to embrace the campaign vision. 

**This leads to the fun truth that all Founders are Fans but not all Fans are Founders…although there’s certainly nothing stopping any Fan from making that leap!

Creators are the ones who qualify to receive the pledged money upon agreeing to complete the goal of the campaign. A campaign might name one specific Creator, or it might provide a list of eligible Creators and designate the funds go to the first among them to agree to the campaign terms. Or, a campaign might lay out criteria that potential Creators have to meet to qualify. We’re all about flexibility and creativity—just be sure your fellow Fans know which potential Creators qualify to make this awesome future a reality.

Then, there’s us. At FanFuture we facilitate the campaign process from launch through successful pledge processing. We only ever receive our 5% fee from those campaigns whose pledged funds have been successfully processed and accepted by a Creator. Once the campaign successfully funds, the Creator takes the lead and we join the Fans in anticipating the successful delivery of the campaign goals.

Finally, Fans can feel good knowing that at least 1% of every successful pledge goes to qualified charities. Why “at least” 1%? Because for our part, FanFuture always donates 1% of every successful pledge to our charity partners, and we invite all Creators to match that 1%, but ultimately it’s up to the Creator, though we expect that more than a few incredible Creators are likely to go far beyond that simple match—and when they do we’ll be sure to let the Fans know.

What elements go into a quality campaign?

Title

Ideally a CLEAR and DESCRIPTIVE signal to fellow Fans that this is a campaign worth reading. The title should also indicate this is a potential future—as the campaign goes viral we want to make sure we’re not ‘that site’ serving up misleading click-bait-and-switch headlines. 

Blurb

A very technical term for the ‘elevator pitch’ version of a campaign’s big, creative, future defining idea. Between the Title and the Blurb, Fans should know what the core of the campaign is, and they should be inspired to dive a little deeper.

Image

A strong, arresting image can make or break a campaign’s early momentum. It’s a campaign’s first impression, dress it appropriately. Custom Fan Art is encouraged!

Optional Video—In addition to the main campaign image, Founders may include a video which will be displayed inside the main campaign’s page in lieu of the campaign title card image (the image that users always see as they initially explore campaigns on the site)

Description

The information core of the campaign is where Founders make their case for the future Fans deserve and should support with their hard-earned pledges. Descriptions should clearly lay out the particulars of the campaign—for both fellow Fans and for any potential Creator the campaign hopes to convince to sign on—including:

• Compelling Reasons—Why this is a future the needs to happen.
• Clear Request—what cool future game/album/event/etc. will this campaign deliver if successful? Do Fans know what they’re pledging toward, and do Creators know what they would need to deliver?
• Defined Creator—A campaign might have one very specific Creator in mind, or it might provide a list of eligible Creators and designate the funds go to the first among them to agree to the campaign terms. Some larger projects will need sign-off from multiple parties before the campaign is successfully funded. A campaign might even simply lay out criteria that any potential creators have to meet to qualify. We’re all about flexibility and creativity—just be sure Fans know which potential Creators qualify to make this awesome future a reality.
• Rallying Call to Action—A pledge is great, sharing the campaign is also pretty great. Coordinating those shares with a few fun suggested #tags is golden. A solid campaign directs and focuses the passion of the Fans to maximize exposure on blogs, forums, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram…
• A final note—Each campaign will be different in length and form. Whether the campaign you write is short and sweet or the length of your doctoral thesis… be clear, creative, & passionate and you can’t go wrong!

Pledges

The all-important economic incentive. Pile up the Fan pledges and dare the Creator to ignore the desire and pent up demand of the Fans. A few important notes about pledges:

• Pledges only process when a creator agrees to deliver on the terms and goals of the campaign. 
• We do require actual credit cards on file to back all pledges as a show of good faith.
• We use Stripe to store and process all pledges. They’re good enough for Kickstarter, Facebook, Amazon, Slack, Lyft, Target…we think we’re on solid ground here. 

Tips

Unlike pledges, Tips always process immediately and are intended for those Super-Fans who want to help build momentum now for their favorite campaigns. 

100% of tips given are used by our in-house Marketing & Design teams to promote and improve the quality and success of campaigns.

For example Tips might be used to: 

• purchase ads promoting the campaign and driving traffic to the campaign page
• produce a professional video or illustration to feature on the campaign page and attract & encourage other fans to pledge
• connect the campaign with social media influencers
• provide professional creative or technical writing & editing support for the campaign

Rewards

First and foremost when Fans pledge, they’re getting the opportunity to help create the incredible future laid out in the campaign goal. Fans should pledge what that goal and experience itself is worth to them.

If the campaign goal is an item or experience that will be made commercially available, Fans are always offered first dibs and any pledge they made will count toward it. 

And we anticipate most creators will also offer additional bonus rewards to incentivize their fans’ pledges.

Any pledges previously made by Fans can always be applied or reshuffled toward these rewards when offered.