Each year, the Unreasonable Institute gathers 25 entrepreneurs tackling social and environmental problems from every corner of the world in Boulder, Colorado. There, they live under the same roof for six weeks, learning from mentors like the former Managing Director of Investments of Google.org and an entrepreneur who’s brought 19 million farmers out of poverty. In order to be accepted to the Unreasonable Institute, finalist candidates are challenged to raise $8,000 it costs to attend the Unreasonable Institute in small contributions. This is the story of the One Earth Designs team, who raised their $8,000 from 132 people in a record 22 days.
The Challenge. Every year, the Unreasonable Institute chooses 40-50 start-ups from hundreds of applicants around the world. Each finalist venture needs to raise $8,000 through crowdsourcing and only the first 25 to do it attend the Institute.
The Org That Did it First in 2011. One Earth Designs (OED) broke the Unreasonable Institute’s crowdsourcing record by raising $8,000 in just 22 days. OED works with rural Himalayan communities to incubate local innovation and entrepreneurship. We engage directly with villagers to co-design products and services such as clean decentralized energy generation and rural waste management programs.
The Strategy. In the beginning, we made lists. We wrote out names of friends, Tweeters, neighbors, and dignitaries and made projections about how much each group was likely to contribute. We reached out to our most ardent supporters first, getting them on board with the challenge we were facing and asking for their advice in crafting our message.
We strategically recruited friends and family from four different continents to serve as outreach hubs and shared marketing materials with them via Dropbox, a fantastic file sharing and syncing system. Our lifestyle of building friendships wherever we go and of being supportive of others’ work meant that our networks were full of individuals who were go-to people for information and guidance within their communities. As a result, news about our work and the Unreasonable Institute spread rapidly on an international scale.
Implementation. Our staff spent approximately 200 hours campaigning and our hub supporters spent countless more. Collectively, we sent around 1,500 emails and hundreds of Facebook and Twitter messages. We used HootSuite to automatically push tweets out around the clock while we either slept or worked on OED in parallel. All in all, we reached over 2,000 people and perhaps more through our extended networks!
Our initial estimates indicated that 90% of our supporters would only be able to contribute up to $50. During the first 2-weeks of our campaign, we focused on galvanizing this group using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. In the last week of our campaign, we relied more heavily on personal emails and phone calls to donors we felt might contribute $100-$500.
Results & Lessons. The majority of the traffic to our Marketplace page came from Facebook. However, all of our serial supporters and larger donations were recruited through personal emails and phone calls. Our peak Twitter readership periods were between 12:00-14:00 both on the East Coast of the US and across Asia.
We had 168 total donations and 132 unique donors. As it turned out, 86% of our supporters contributed $1-$50. We raised $3,056 from these supporters. A small group of donors (both new and long-term) contributed $100-$500, summing to $4,944.
We raised 54% of the Marketplace funds in the first 21 days. During the 3rd week, however, we experienced a technical glitch that prevented part of our donor network from receiving our emails. Within 24 hours of fixing the problem (on Day 22), we received the remaining $3,650 we needed to complete the challenge. The power of email is still alive and well in today’s social media-dominated world!
Call to Action. There are many amazing ventures on the Unreasonable Marketplace who are challenged by hurdles far larger than ours. One entrepreneur travels 15km to access the Internet. Another has had to collect cash donations door-to-door because no one around owns a credit card. Join us in supporting these finalists to attend the Unreasonable Institute by mobilizing your networks and giving these entrepreneurs wings!
