crowdfunding, ask clay

This is the twelfth post in our 30 Day Ask Clay Crowdfunding Q&A.

I’m answering a new question every day in June.

Submit your question by going to CrowdfundingHacks.com/AskClay, where you can see all of the questions and all of my answers.

Full Transcript

Hey everyone…this is Clay Hebert from CrowdfundingHacks.com…and today’s question is…

How long should my crowdfunding campaign run?

This is a great question and definitely one that’s on the mind of everyone doing a crowdfunding campaign.

The answer is extremely simple.

“Your project should last 30 days.”

This gives you enough time to execute the plan, not get fatigued and stay sane.

It’s also a short enough duration to maintain urgency for the backers.

Now this isn’t just my opinion or common sense, Kickstarter has published data that 30-days is the sweet spot for crowdfunding campaigns.

Now there are some exceptions, if you’re going to be on the road the last few days of the campaign, it’s fine to extend it a day or two or even three or four, but don’t run a 60-day campaign because that’s too long, people are going to lose interest and there’s not enough urgency for the backers. It’s OK if it’s not exactly 30 but 30 days should be the target duration for your campaign.

As always, you can submit your question or see all of the crowdfunding questions and my answers at http://crowdfundinghacks.com/AskClay

End Transcript



  • plaiche

    Hi Clay,

    Does this rule of thumb apply to nonprofit campaigns as well? We are a tiny 13 year old Tanzanian NGO http://www.tzkids.org and are a week away from launching our first campaign. It’s a critical project to install a new water system at our farm which is an orphanage and school as well. Drought has been killing us!

    Anyway, we were planning to do 60 days, but it sounds like that’s not best practices. Our concern with 30 days is that we have a small but dedicated following (mostly on FB), and it might take some time for our campaign to build momentum.

    Any advice greatly appreciated.

    Michael