What a crowd-sourced funding campaign costs depends on what you’re actually doing. A $2 to $5 million raise costs more to run than a small one, and different platforms and partners price things differently. So take these as real-world ranges, not fixed quotes. Here’s where the money goes.
Platform fees
The platform takes a success fee, and it usually sits around 5 to 7% of your total raise. On top of that there’s often a small upfront fee, around $3k. Every platform prices it a bit differently, so confirm the exact numbers with whoever you’re raising through.
Marketing: the two big buckets
Your marketing spend falls into two buckets, performance marketing and your pitch video.
- Pitch video. Anywhere from $3k to $20k, depending on how polished you go.
- Digital advertising. Managing the ad campaign typically runs $5k to $15k.
- Email campaign. Often bundled in with the ads. On its own, budget around $6k to $8k.
PR
PR is optional, but it can really lift a raise. A dedicated PR partner usually costs around $15k. At Compound Media we handle it for about $6k.
The ads budget
This one sits apart from the management fees above. It’s the actual money spent on the ads, and as a rule of thumb it’s around 3% of your target raise. You can see our recommended budget for your number in our calculator.
What decides how far that budget stretches is your cost per EOI. The cheaper you can bring an EOI in, the more you generate for the same spend. Good cut-through on social lowers that cost, and a low cost per EOI is what turns a modest budget into a strong raise. (More on that in what an EOI is and why it matters.)
The number most people overlook
Campaigns get judged on the final raise figure. Fair enough, it’s the headline. But the number worth watching is the raise compared to the ad spend that generated it. That’s the real measure of how efficient a campaign was, and it’s the one most founders never look at. A few of ours pulled in strong raises off a small ads budget.
The costs pay you back
These numbers add up, no argument. But a good CSF campaign does two jobs at once. It raises capital, and it puts your brand in front of thousands of people. Do both and the spend stops being just the cost of a raise. It’s an investment in your brand and your standing in your market.
There’s more you keep afterwards. You can reuse the campaign’s creative across your wider marketing, and you come out of it with a bigger email list and a stack of new customers and contacts. Some founders report a real jump in sales off the back of a raise, enough that the campaign partly pays for itself.
Weighing CSF against other ways to raise? I’ve compared them in CSF vs VC, angels and everything else.
General information only, not financial advice. Fees vary by platform and campaign.