An evolving outline for starting a community funded project
Organize a community
- Start one of the following, or all
- Email group: great way to organize small groups of dedicated people (your leaders).
- Twitter account: break your own news in real time. Be human, there is more to life then your cause.
- Blog. Group blogs are good. Get everyone in the core leadership blogging. An Editor helps with polishing writing.
- Forum
- Organize people into Tribes. If you're really small, then you have one tribe. A tribe is < 200. Above 200 people, you can't know everyone in the group: it's no longer a tribe. The optimum is around 12-20.
Making it happen
- Use Kickstarter to raise funding
- Make sure to give incentives to get involved
- Exclusive things, like links from a supporters page
- Invisible Children does bracelets
- Make sure to give incentives to get involved
- Use Daytum to chart numbers, statistics, etc
- Use wiki software to capture everything
- Business model
- Policies
- Board decisions and minutes
- Ideas
- Plans
- Resources
Organize local, in-person events
- If you're distributed across geography, come up with something you can duplicate.
- Fund-raising runs
- Art shows
Be your own journalist
- Everybody Has a Press, use yours. Document everything. Video, audio, photos. Do this really well, so well that everyone that is part of the tribe feels like they were there. If you don't have a blog, start it now and publish your media in every format you can do well. Write, video, podcast, etc. A CC license is preferred so people can spread the word. This is your voice: let it be loud and free.
Celebrate Victories
Create Community Publications, or something else, but always immortalize and celebrate community achievements.