Crowdfunding Succeeds Through Community Connections

V.3, N.31

When entrepreneurs tell me that they would like to raise capital through investment crowdfunding, my first question is: How big are your email and social media lists? No matter how good your financials and business plan are, you ultimately have to tell a compelling story to a large universe of fans. Doing this effectively requires careful planning, message development, and ongoing communication with your audience. No one has done more to nurture these skills than Kathleen Minogue, the founder and CEO of Crowdfund Better.

Our featured interview this week features Kathleen, who explains the origins of her business, her educational philosophy, and the success she has had with clients. If you’re thinking of doing crowdfunding yourself, you would be wise to consider taking her courses.

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MS: Thanks, Kathleen, for talking with us today. Your company’s website, Crowdfund Better, says that you’ve been educating entrepreneurs on how to raise capital using investment crowdfunding since 2012. The year 2012 was when the federal JOBS Act legalizing investment crowdfunding passed, so that makes you one of the first educators in the entire field. What motivated you to get involved with crowdfunding, and what was your initial vision for the company?

KM: Actually, I started by launching my own successful crowdfunding campaign. When I was researching crowdfunding, I came across a campaign by Amanda Palmer, a musician, raising funds from her fans to produce an album her record label wouldn’t get behind. Her campaign ultimately raised over $1 million. During her video, she said, “This is how we make music now,” and I thought…No, this is how we make EVERYTHING now. I realized the potential for crowdfunding was vast, but most folks I talked to didn’t know about it, much less understand how it worked, especially friends who were artists or trying to start businesses. My business grew as a consulting side-hustle for a few years, and then I leaned into my background as a teacher to create education and training tools that could help more folks use crowdfunding successfully. And that vision guides the company today. Crowdfund Better is an education and consulting organization that wants to make it less overwhelming and more fun to raise community funding.

MS: You have a trademark attached to what you call the “Crowdfund Better® Process,” so I know I can only get a partial answer. But what is that process, and what differentiates it from other programs teaching crowdfunding?

KM: We look at crowdfunding as a business development process, an activity that is not just about funding but about building a community around a business or project that can support and sustain it for years to come. The more community and connection built before launch, the more value (financial and nonfinancial) campaign creators derive from crowdfunding. We have seen this play out time and again with our students. But the majority of campaigns launch without much thought as to who might support their campaign or how they will inspire folks to support them.

The Crowdfund Better® Process puts campaign page creation at the end of the journey. We start with education, helping folks understand how community funding tools like crowdfunding work. Then we move to strategy, where we help folks understand where their campaign fits in the community funding ecosystem, including what type of crowdfunding makes sense, how much they can possibly raise, and what kinds of things they might do to increase their chances of success. Then we move on to training where we not only encourage them to fill those gaps, which are often communications and marketing gaps, but we also provide them with a step-by-step process for preparing a campaign that is more about getting their network ready to hear their ask. Only when they understand why and how they will engage with their network and community do we encourage them to create their campaign page and launch.

MS: So you have been operating for 13 years. How many “students” have passed through your program, and how have they done at raising capital?

KM: So many! The number of people who have touched our process is in the thousands. I’m proud to say that students who do all the steps in the Crowdfund Better® Process meet or exceed their goals 90% of the time. (That’s way better than the average crowdfunding success rates, by the way.) Some of the folks we educate never launch a campaign because our process reveals they’re not a good fit for crowdfunding. I also consider this success because it prevents these folks from wasting time and social capital. Some folks start our process, and when they begin doing the exercises about telling their story more effectively, sometimes for the first time, their business generates more revenue or their project takes on a life of its own, so they don’t need crowdfunding.

We want this knowledge to reach beyond the folks who work directly with us. That’s why, three years ago, we created the Crowdfund Better® Certified Advisor Program. It is the first professional development program in the U.S. focused on empowering small business advisors with crowdfunding knowledge and tools. And it’s working! We’ve already trained forty advisors, including a dozen Small Business Development Center (SBDC) advisors in Florida, fourteen microbusiness advisors in Washington state, and advisors from Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Utah.

MS: Give us a specific example or two of entrepreneurs who have successfully used your program to launch their businesses.

KM: Sure! PYNRS Performance Streetwear, the only Black-owned running apparel company in the United States, used our process in 2021 to raise over $53,000 (153% of their original goal). It was a rewards crowdfunding campaign to fund the first manufacturing run of their product. After that campaign, PYNRS was selected by REI to be part of their Path Ahead Ventures program, and now they have their product in REI stores. Last year, we worked with PYNRS again to help them give their community the opportunity to become investors in the company. That Reg CF offering raised $124,000. Now, PYNRS has entered into a partnership with Brooks Running to grow their community and reach further.

Common Ground Coffee & Market here in Boise used our process to launch a rewards campaign to raise over $23,000, again exceeding their goal, to build out the patio of their new coffee shop. During their soft opening, so many people showed up that the line went out the door. People waited for up to an hour to get their coffee, and when they paid at the register, rather than complaining about the wait, people thanked the staff for making this space available for the community.

MS: What do you view as the top mistake businesses engaging in crowdfunding and other types of community funding make?

KM: The biggest mistake by far is to focus on funding, not people. The success of any community funding initiative comes from inspiring folks to support you. Many businesses and project creators focus on what they will get from the process, not what their potential supporters get from participating. This oversight is such a big issue that we’re launching a new curriculum, called the Build With Community Mindset™. We looked back at our most successful students over the last decade and noticed most were guided by a mindset, an ethos, that put community at the heart of the business or project. They invited their communities to participate in building their businesses and continued to communicate and engage with their communities over time. Not only did that make it easier for them to raise funds, but their community stayed emotionally invested in seeing the project grow and thrive long afterwards.

MS: What are the other services your company provides?

KM: I appreciate you asking this question. Our work at Crowdfund Better is so much more than crowdfunding. Because we are an education organization, the entire ecosystem of community funding is fundamental to our work. That puts us in a unique position to help folks new to the community funding space. We want to help them figure out what approach best matches their goals, including how to stack capital from a variety of sources to fund their project or business. So we do a lot of high-level consulting on all types of community funding and make referrals to other experts they might not know about.

Also, the skills we teach as part of our Crowdfund Better® Process are transferable to other areas of business and project development, especially community-building, communications, and marketing. So some folks come through the door looking for crowdfunding and stay to work on community-building. We also partner with aligned organizations such as the National Coalition for Community Capital (NC3) to consult on community engagement strategies and marketing outreach for folks launching community investment funds.

MS: Has your company been able to operate self-sufficiently on a fee-for-service basis, or do you rely on grants? And how do you see your services, your revenue model, and your company evolving over the next five to ten years?

KM: Crowdfund Better is funded exclusively by fees for the education and services we provide. Sometimes these services are provided to grant-funded organizations, but we don’t, as a practice, apply for grant funding. One reason Crowdfund Better developed this way is that when I started in 2012, crowdfunding was so new that there were no grants available. But looking back, it’s really given us freedom—the freedom to build the tools needed by the communities we serve, not just what is receiving funding this year or next. Operating through fees has allowed us to grow organically and to learn by doing, making it easier to pivot when things don’t work. It also gave us deep compassion for the journeys of our small business students because we are one ourselves.

MS: That’s impressive. And looking forward?

KM: In the next five to ten years, I see Crowdfund Better becoming a stronger education and resource hub for a wider group of advisors, community leaders, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit professionals. Ultimately, I want folks to take the tools we create and make them their own. Nothing gives me greater joy than hearing the folks who do our Certified Advisor Program reframe the work to speak to their community.

MS: Another part of your website that intrigues me is that you encourage economic development agencies to “enhance your entrepreneurship or business support program with crowdfunding expertise.” What economic development departments have taken you up on this offer, and what exactly are they doing today?

KM: Some of this is happening through our train-the-trainer programs. We currently have Crowdfund Better® Certified Advisors at Pinellas County EDC in Florida, Pike County EDC in Illinois, and Bronx EDC in New York. These folks are weaving community funding into the conversation in their communities, providing crowdfunding guidance to local entrepreneurs and small business owners. We are also partnering with the Harbinger Consultancy to integrate community funding into economic development conversations, including a recent training we co-presented on community capital and the outdoor recreation economy. And then there are some really exciting conversations happening around incorporating community funding education into entrepreneurship training and workforce development initiatives.

MS: This could be a game-changer for economic development. Let’s think more broadly: The statistics around crowdfunding for 2025 show that the market is shrinking. Yes, more than two million Americans have invested in crowdfunding offerings, but they make up less than one percent of the U.S. population. What can public policy do, both nationally and at the state level, to expand participation of both investors and companies in the crowdfunding universe?

KM: You won’t be surprised to hear me speak up for education here! We have so few resources on community funding available. When entrepreneurs look for trusted information on starting or expanding a business, the inertia to keep doing things the same way is overwhelming. For example, when the JOBS Act passed, not one dollar of funding for education came with it, putting the onus on the fledgling start-ups in the investment crowdfunding space to educate the public. I can tell you from experience how difficult that is with so few resources. So on a policy level, we need to prioritize dollars for community funding education—everything from professional development for business advisors and economic development folks to training for CPAs and financial advisors.

I’m also a big supporter of creating a microbusiness offering for the small businesses that make our communities places we want to live. I can’t tell you how many beloved small businesses don’t pursue a community investment offering because the legal hurdles are out-sized for the scale of their businesses, and the economics are upside down for the size of their offerings.

MS: One final question: How do you invest locally?

KM: My local investments start with my passion for local food. When I lived in Los Angeles, I became an early investor in With Love Market & Cafe, which focuses on bringing healthy food to food deserts in South LA, and I still serve on their board. When I moved to Boise, one of the first things I did was get myself to the Boise Farmers Market and the Boise Food Co-op. We have so many amazing local farmers and small businesses here that I spend a lot of my dollars supporting. I also invest in Reg CF offerings for businesses based in Idaho, including what I see as Idaho’s biggest Reg CF success to date, Hempitecture, whose story weaves together local agriculture, local manufacturing, and local job creation.

MS: Great examples! Good luck with your work, Kathleen.

Read all of our past interviews here.