Buy a Bar survey results are in - and they're very interesting!

'Buy a Bar' was London Music Masters' first crowdfunding initiative, and as it was such a huge success we are excited about the possibility of launching other appeals like this in the future!

However, we were particularly interested to find out what our donors really thought. We reached out to them with a short survey to see how they felt about our 'Buy a Bar' appeal: for example, what prompted them to donate - were they influenced by the amounts suggested by us, or by the sums donated by others on the Just Giving page? Did our focus on promoting the appeal through social networks really work? Might they consider donating towards another crowdfunded initiative in the future, and if so, how soon...?

The results are in, and we think they're pretty interesting. Here are some of the conclusions we've drawn from the data:

1. Crowdfunding campaigns can be an effective way to attract new donors who may not be able to afford larger sums of money

• The vast majority of donations we received were small amounts from people who hadn’t donated to us before
• 74% of donations were £30 or under
• Median average donation was £20

2. Suggesting particular amounts to donate does have an effect – and perhaps starting off the campaign with a few visible donations of predetermined amounts could encourage others to donate at a similar level

• 68% of the donations we received corresponded to the specific amounts suggested for bars, lines or pages of music (£5, £10, £20, £40, £80, or £120)
• 45% of survey respondents said they were somewhat influenced by the visible amounts which had been donated by others on the page

3. Running a campaign focused on social networks is an effective way of encouraging people to donate

• 55% of survey respondents said they heard about the appeal on Facebook or Twitter, and 45% said that it was content published by LMM employees on these sites which influenced them the most to donate
• Donor comment: “I think social networking is really key for something like this – I knew of it vaguely but it’s having friends constantly bugging you to finally click the link that gets you there.”

4. Making it personal is really important

• Despite the efforts to push the appeal primarily through Facebook and Twitter, 55% of survey respondents still said that it was a personal email or word of mouth which influenced them the most to donate.
• Donor comment: “It was nice to be named as an individual who donated and to receive follow-up emails”

Click here to view the full report, including donation statistics and survey answers...

Huge thanks to everyone who filled in the survey - your feedback will help us to plan our future appeals more effectively and to ensure we communicate with all our donors in the best possible way!