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Organizing Crowdfunding For Your Next Family Reunion

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Family reunions are a great way to reconnect with distant family members. While some people find that chatting on social media is enough to feel that they are up to date on what everyone is doing, there are a lot of great reasons to get together for some time as a family.

Catching up with distant family members, especially those who don’t use social media, having a more in depth conversation than posts and comments allow are all great reasons to get together with your family every once in a while.

But family reunions are also expensive. That’s where crowdfunding comes in.

Why Crowdfund?

People often associate crowdfunding with entrepreneurs and expensive tech startups. While crowdfunding is absolutely a way that businesses can get their funding, and is especially useful for business owners who may traditionally struggle to get business loans from banks, there are many other ways to use crowdfunding sites.

Crowdfunding is often used to get help paying for medical bills, home repairs after a disaster, or other emergency costs that come up for familiies over time. But crowdfunding can also be used prior to an event, as a way to help a lot of people chip in money to make something happen.

Family reunions are expensive. Usually one or two people are responsible for hosting the entire gathering, which means finding a place to gather, arranging food, making sure someone will be entertaining the kids and that there’s something for them to do, considering if live music or something else might be good for the event at large.

Instead of just one or two people shouldering the initial burden of the event, and then perhaps trying to get a little bit of money from people who attend, crowdfunding lets people pay up front to help defer the cost of the reunion, and can make the event itself more fun overall.

Which Site To Use

There are so many different crowdfunding websites out there that it’s difficult to decide exactly which one will be just right for a particular family gathering. But before you make the choice to start your campaign, here are a few details to consider:

  • What percentage will the site take? Every site takes at least a small percentage of the gathered funds to defer their costs; this is how the websites stay open and make money. Knowing ahead of time what percentage will be taken lets families make their goal amounts correctly. Also, different sites do charge different percentages, so knowing which one will be the best deal for your family is important.
  • Do you get the money regardless of hitting your goals, or does the campaign need to be fully funded for the money to release? Either can be fine, but they can be used differently. If the reunion is happening no matter what, and you’re just looking for whatever help people can give in terms of paying, then a site that gives you whatever money is gathered might be best. If the reunion is only happening if your family makes its fundraising target, you’ll want to set that up differently.
  • Are there any rules or restrictions on the site itself that must be observed? Each crowdfunding website follows certain rules about what it will and will not allow to be funded on the website. The average family reunion probably won’t break any rules, but making sure ahead of time saves headaches.

How To Let Family Know

If you’re considering crowdfunding, but your family isn’t social media savvy, letting everyone know about the online event can be tricky. You may have to get creative, especially if your reunion is happening because many people don’t have internet access.

Maybe one person from each branch of your family takes responsibility for collecting money from their internet un-savvy relatives and contributes to the crowdfund that way. Perhaps they pledge a certain amount and then pay with cash or check when they arrive, if the organizer can afford to front the cost of the event.

Crowdfunding has the ability to be used in innovative and exciting ways to fund any number of possibilities. By working with the various options on the websites, families can take the weight of paying for an entire event off one person’s shoulders and distribute it more evenly amongst the family members. It’s still work to set up the campaign, monitor its progress, and follow up with family members to make sure donations are sent in. As organizers continue to develop their options, websites will become more and more useable in situations like these.

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