Well done folks, you did it – we got to our fundraising target of £3000, which is a huge relief, and allowed me the first decent nights sleep in nearly 4 weeks. We still have 3 days to go, so anything we raise over the target will go towards tools or kit that we can use for visitors. We’re particularly keen to get some sort of projector so that we can show films and presentations, but we’ll see what the final total is.
Of course, once finish date of 9am Saturday is passed, the real work begins – of organising 80+ rewards, for a start, and then of getting our build scheduled. Straw bales have already been sourced, there has been the hint of some potentially free lime-hemp plaster, and I’ll be off to track down local timber shortly.
Over the course of 4 weeks I’ve learned a lot about crowdfunding very quickly, primarily that it is almost a full time job. Keeping a message in front of people for such a long time takes persistence, and doing it without annoying everyone to death is nigh impossible. Over the month we grew our facebook page following from some 300 to over 700, have developed a twitter following (something that I discovered was invaluable, I wish I’d done it sooner), and reached well over 30,000 people in some way.
The patience of those who are closest to us and so have received the largest number of updates and messages, has been amazing, and I thank you all once again for putting up with it. Now things will calm down a bit and we’ll keep everyone updated of progress, but not excessively so.
Stay tuned ….
