Peer-to-Peer Fund-Raising Tactic: Create a Sense of Urgency

David Ravel, director of a performing-arts series at Alverno College in Milwaukee, was desperate to find people to support a local music festival after a big sponsor pulled out. So he turned to Kickstarter, a site that enables individuals to advertise and raise money for arts projects.

But Mr. Ravel would be successful only if he managed to raise $15,000, the amount of money local businesses and individuals agreed to match if he could raise that much.

In 45 days, he raised $15,395 online, plus additional donations from people who mailed checks. “You never know how deep your community support is until you test it,” he says.

In addition to appealing to donors’ concern about the music festival’s own uncertain future, Kickstarter always tries to promote a sense of urgency by requiring fund raisers to set a dollar goal and a deadline by which donations must be received, Mr. Ravel says. If the goal and deadline were not met, the online donors do not have to pay.

Another Kickstarter feature also helped: It requires fund raisers to reward supporters at certain pledge levels. Many donors received T-shirts, CDs, and backstage passes to meet the artists, he says.

To publicize the online fund-raising effort, the college sent messages to some 12,000 people on its e-mail list and 1,000 more on Facebook, who then took to their own social networks and asked their contacts to support the festival on Kickstarter. Local news-media coverage helped spread the word.