"All or nothing" is a golden rule of crowdfunding. If you want to be successful, you have to reach your funding goal completely or end up with nothing. In short: no crowd, no funding. The eighth IHK Crowdfunding Night was all about community building and campaign planning.
For the first time in the history of Crowdfunding Night, host Linette Heimrich welcomed "the crowd" to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry (IHK). The IHK Academy forum was packed, and the audience listened intently to the program. This time, the event took place in cooperation with StartinFOOD instead of.
After a welcome address by Linette Heimrich and Christine Purnell (StartinFOOD), Dr. Michael Gebert introduced the advanced training course for crowdfunding managers. This seminar provides startups and service providers (e.g., agencies) with the necessary foundation for a successful campaign.
The question all project starters ask themselves is: Where do I find "my" crowd and how can I get them excited about my project? Building a community is the number one success factor. Yet this aspect is often underestimated in campaign planning. These and other topics were discussed on the panel. Three successful campaigns and their campaign managers presented themselves on stage:
The guests
Margret Hafendörfer: With the musical project she brought “UDAAN – an inspiring journey to India” and the dance group D4Dance brought Munich's first Bollywood musical to the (Gasteig) stage. In a talk with Linette Heimrich, she talked about how difficult it was to plan the campaign and reach the target amount. Through crowdfunding, several sponsors and partners ultimately became aware of her, and the musical celebrated its successful premiere at the Gasteig last year.
Stefan Marshall (Perplex GmbH): With the crowdfunding campaign for Junkers1 he (partially) financed the faithful replica of the historic metal aircraft 
Commissioned by the Dessau Museum of Technology. The campaign, with a lead time of five months, was a major project for Stefan Marshall. Crowdfunding in the cultural sector and convincing the target audience of this type of financing is very difficult, but it paid off for the museum in Dessau. The project was successful, and the replica has been financed. The crowd helped raise awareness of the project – the museum subsequently received federal funding.
Susanne Schmitz (wildefreunde advertising agency) the stage. Susanne is Ruki's communications and crowdfunding professional. Ruki wants to Crowdfunding Make gluten-free, fresh, organic pasta available everywhere. The campaign ran until February 24 and was a success – Ruki exceeded its funding goal of €10,000. With the help of a great campaign video and a variety of marketing activities, the team managed to get the crowd excited about their project.
Networking & Open Space
Following the Q&A session, the panel discussion and question-and-answer session took place. The audience was able to submit live questions via sli.do. The most popular topics were the choice of platform and tax issues. Following the Q&A session, networking and the open space were opened. Attendees could learn about ongoing campaigns and provide helpful feedback to the campaign initiators.
Photos: Goran Gajanin
