Fund My Cause

Once or twice a lifetime, a cause comes to the forefront you absolutely need to support. Need to. Must. Can have it no other way. You immediately begin thinking of ways to help that cause. Often - but not always - it's in the form of finances.

Get Money. 

How can I get it? How can I keep it? How can I get even more of it? It's a passion for some and an obsession for others.

Then the question becomes - or rather should be in the first place -  How much do I need? I know that XYZ costs this much but there are logistics and overhead to consider which would put the basic price package at almost double it should be.

Expectations

What would others expect of me if I took their money? Are there strings attached. This is particularly true if you reward your higher contributing patrons with a little reward such as an early copy of the tune, t-shirt, etc. The other question alone these lines is does the reward match the gift, and can you deliver? Some of your contributors may even notice that the rewards are clearly out of line for the gift, and they'll tell you that. They do that because they understand intuitively what kinds of gifts to hand out. Can you deliver? You should already have that figured out in your mind and lined up ready to dole out.

Get Backers

Who are your likely financial backers? Friends? Family? Brief acquaintances? Strangers. All of the above are acceptable funding sources. Each of them have to be "cultivated" a little differently. Social media is your friend in this regard. In fact, social media should be every fund raiser's friend.

It's important that you just don't focus on the money. You should be cultivating these relationships apart from the money. Like in any relationship, there should be a healthy give and take. If the only time you approach someone is to ask for money, that relationship will sour quickly. There are times to ask but there are clearly are times to just build relationships. 

So the bottom line is this: after you've found a cause to support, figure out how to get the funding for it. There are a thousand different ways to do that. Or more. But first you need to be as detailed as possible in what you need before you go looking for the platform to raise the money on.

In other words, people are looking for clear, well thought-out projects to back and support. Before getting it posted online, you should really consider what you want to do, how you want to do it, and all the risks involved. If you do that, the chances of you being funded are greater because it tells people you have thought this thing through and it's not a "fly-by-night" project. Otherwise, you will not stand out from the other 500,000 people who need funding for their project.