What is crowdfunding?

The beauty of Boosted is that crowdfunding gives you so much more than money.  Crowdfunding helps you build an avid community of invested fans. Once people put their hand in their pocket they’re personally committed to your success. You’ll end up with a digital community of givers who’ll engage with you and your art time and time again, whether that’s through donations, purchasing tickets to your shows, or buying your work. Plus, they’ll hype your art to friends and whānau. They’re loyal fans. That’s gold.

Why crowdfund? ​

Crowdfunding is powerful. It’s stronger than marketing because it creates a community around your project. People are buying in, taking ownership, and personally investing in your success. You can’t get that kind of support from a grant or a gift from a wealthy benefactor.
Crowdfunding gives you a head start on promoting your project. You make people curious about your creation long before you need to get bums on seats, or eyes in galleries.
Plus, you get to build-up your skillset while you’re at it. It’ll give you a hands-on, crash course in community building, content creation, event organisation and marketing. Not too shabby right?

PS. Crowdfunding can (and often should), form just one piece of a larger fundraising puzzle, you can crowdfund AND do traditional fundraising AND get yourself a grant.

Why crowdfund with Boosted?

We’re Aotearoa’s only arts crowdfunding platform, so if you need money to make your creative project happen, you’ve come to the right place.

Since 2013, we’ve helped over 2,000 artistic mates raise a cool combined $14 million for their arts projects. Our 84% success rate isn’t bad either (holla if you find one better, ‘cos we’ve been looking).

Boosted’s secret sauce for success is our expert crew. When you crowdfund with us, you get one-on-one coaching and support from a team of crowdfunding aces.

Boosted is run by the Arts Foundation, a charitable trust backing artists to make their mark on New Zealand. When you crowdfund with Boosted, you get in front of a community of 16,000 + arts lovers from Kaitaia to Bluff.

So, who should crowdfund?

Your crowd is crucial. However, we’re not going to lie, it ain’t the easiest way to make a dollar. You’ll be hustling hard. You’re going to eat, sleep and excrete crowdfunding. BUT the pay-off is immense. Not just those sweet dollar dollar bills, but all the extra juicy stuff we talked about above.

If you’ve got a community, moxie and grit, crowdfunding is absolutely for you.

How Boosted works

A few things you need to know about how we roll.

It’s all or nothing innit

If you don’t hit 100% of your target by your closing date, all funds received are returned to your donors, and there are no fees for you or the kind people who donated to your campaign.

We do it this way because the all-or-nothing model raises the stakes and raises your success rate. Simples.

Giving is its own reward

Some sites encourage crowdfunders to offer rewards to people who contribute to their projects. (We’re talkin’ CD’s, books, swag and experiences). This is not an option on Boosted.
Rewards can be a real distraction for artists, and there are numerous examples of people underestimating the cost of rewards and the time to send them. Imagine dealing with rewards for 200+ donors. Think of the cost, time and effort.

There’s also a tax reason. Donors who support your project on Boosted qualify for a 33% tax credit because we’re run by a charitable trust. It’s a legal requirement that charitable donations are given with no entitlement to goods and services in return. If rewards are offered as incentives to donate, then it’s no longer a donation, and it is no longer eligible for a tax credit.

Your crowd supports you because they feel a connection to you and your work. Boosted has one of the highest success rates in the world at 85%, so we know rewards are not a deal breaker. Love runs deep.

How the money works

If you’re successful, 90% of the money you raise goes to you. Boosted takes a 10% commission to cover the cost of running and maintaining the Boosted website, the time we spend supporting you, creating handy resources like this, running workshops, credit card transaction costs and handling fees.

At the end of your successful campaign, you invoice Boosted for the amount you’ve raised, minus 10%.

If you’re GST registered, you can add GST on top of your grant amount. This GST payment is unique to Boosted. If you’re GST registered and considering using another crowdfunding website, check the GST implications first.

And remember, the money Boosted pays you is considered income in most instances, so talk to your accountant about your tax obligations.  

Ready to get started?

Email us to start raising money for your creative mahi.