State of the Fund Drive: End of Week 1

Here is a graph that I like.

I have a big spreadsheet that I update during fund drives. I started it for the first fund drive after I became Editor-in-Chief, in 2011, and have been updating it every year since. Partly it's just a necessity: until now we haven't used any external crowdfunding sites, so there had to be a record of how much money had come in, and even now I update the tracker rocket on the main SH site manually. But it's also useful as a tool to see what works in terms of promotion -- 2012 is when we started publishing bonus content during the fund drive, and you can see how it pulls the curve forward compared to 2011, encouraging earlier donations. It's useful to remind myself what caused a spike at a particular time in a particular year -- the 2013 acceleration on day 21 is thanks to a guest post on John Scalzi's blog -- and to get a sense of how things are going overall compared to previous years. I have columns that calculate the average daily amount donated, and the average amount that needs to be donated each day to hit our goal.

Of course fund drives aren't that nice and linear. Somewhere on the internet there's a graph of averaged crowdfunding donation/time curves, and from what I remember of it, ours is pretty typical: an initial spurt, then a lag phase, then acceleration as the final deadline approaches. It's reassuring to have a graph that tells me, when we're three weeks in and only a third of the way to our goal, that this is just how it goes.

Which is why I'm so happy about this year's graph. What is shows is the cumulative percentage donated of the final amount raised. Not the goal -- in 2012, 2013 and 2014 we raised more than our base goal -- but the amount that was actually raised, which is why all the lines stop at 100, rather than going up to 110 or 115. And what you see this year, the purple line, is that we've got off to a faster start than ever before, with 25% of our goal already raised by day 7. The earliest we have hit 25% before now is day 13! The actual amount is even higher because our goal is higher -- we've raised $4,500 so far this year, compared to $2,650 at the same point last year -- but the percentage is what really cheers me up, because it means that we're ahead of the curve, literally. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I attribute a lot of this to the 72 of you who have supported us here on Patreon so far. When we started, I had no idea how many people would be enticed into providing ongoing support; last year we had just over 550 donors in total, and I thought we might be doing well if we got 100 patrons by the end of the fund drive. To be three-quarters of the way to that mini-goal is amazing. In fact if you multiply it up, you'll see that the raw Patreon total alone represents more than $4,500 -- but of course you have to take out the site fees, and the reward fulfilment fees from that. But even with caveats applied, your contributions so far will pay for one story each month, and even if nobody else supports via Patreon this year that's a wonderful outcome. It gives us a base from which to build not just this year but in future years. Thank you!

There is, of course, a fair distance to go yet. Maybe it will turn out that this year everyone just donated early, and our curve will merge back into the 2012-2014 trend. We've got plenty of things coming up to try to ensure that doesn't happen: this week we'll be doing more of a push for our fifteenth anniversary ebook (which all of you will be receiving, of course), so keep an eye out for the cover and full table of contents. And we have so many good things still to come in the special issue.

Around these parts, I'll be back tomorrow when the new issue is published (our first paid post!), back with an update to the graph (and possibly some other stats) next weekend, and back on the 28th with our first ebook, containing all of September's material. Hope you're having or have had a great weekend -- and thanks again.

-- Niall