Entry Deadline for Boldest Crowdfunding Award Closes January 9

Posted on by Clive Reffell
Main mage for a blog about Boldest Crowdfunding Award

I have been writing about crowdfunding for Crowdsourcing Week since 2016, and Crowdsourcing Week is a co-founder of the international BOLD Awards for innovators and innovation. There’s an amazing 33 categories of digital industries and the tech that powers them, including crowdfunding. Crowdfunding award schemes seem to be pretty few and far between, and here’s a bit more of an explanation about this one and the benefits of entering before the deadline of January 9.

Why bother?

  • Entering awards shows you think your team is doing a great job, and win or lose it can boost team morale.
  • To enter awards shows confidence to existing customers and stakeholders, and it can be a door-opener to new ones.
  • The process of creating an entry identifies what a company is doing particularly well, and can become transferable content used for other valuable purposes.
  • Progression through stages of the BOLD Awards provides a stream of marketing content to use in any way you decide.

What does it take to enter?

A written submission of just a few hundred words, with links possible to other content, should start with an overview of what your organisation is and does. This probably already exists. And then cover these three points:

  1. A summary of your successful crowdfunding campaign
  2. Demonstrate how you encouraged people to back your project
  3. Describe a benefit, or benefits, the crowdfunding delivered beyond simply raising money.
  • Once an online entry is started, it can be re-visited and worked on right up to the final deadline on January 9, 2025.
  • Take a look at 2024’s finalists.

The BOLD Awards structure

  • There are 33 categories of digital industries and the tech that powers them.
  • Boldest Crowdfunding Project is one of the categories. It’s not all about who raised the most money, and it’s not just for startups.
  • Each entry can be submitted in up to three categories, so each business that enters can choose the most appropriate other ones. It could be Boldest Sustainability if you’re helping the planet, Boldest CPG if you produce consumer packaged goods, Boldest Mobility if you’re in the transport sector, and so on.
  • The entry deadline date is January 9, 2025, so there’s not much time.

What it takes to win

  • Submit an entry to begin with.
  • A round of public voting in January is an opportunity for a business to mobilise its customers, investors, social media followers, and other stakeholders. It will let them know you’re confident to enter, and it can boost brand loyalty when people feel flattered that they are asked for their personal support.
  • A short list of the top entries will go to the next stage of assessment by a panel of international judges.
  • The winner in each category will be determined by a 50/50 blend of public votes and judge’s score.

Award ceremony

  • Finalists in all categories will be invited to attend a gala dinner award ceremony in Lisbon, Portugal, on Friday March 28th, 2025.
  • This is a unique event to network with peers among some of the world’s most innovative talent, and with representatives of the various category partners/sponsors.
  • Use event photos in your internal communications and external marketing.

What else?

  • Please get in touch via [email protected] if you have anything you want to ask or check.

I wish you a successful 2025, and hope you close Quarter 1 by receiving a BOLD Award in Lisbon. It would be great to see you there. #beBOLD

Crowdfunding is Great Marketing. Have you heard about “The Oscars for Crowdfunding”?

Posted on by Clive Reffell
Crowdfunding BOLD Awards

It’s said by many people – not just me – that as well as raising money, effective crowdfunding is great marketing. It gets you written about and maybe interviewed. It gets you noticed by would-be suppliers, collaborators, distributors, influencers, affiliates and stockists, as well as backers. I made one of own investments after being impressed when I saw, by total accident,  a startup CEO interviewed on television about her crowdfunding project.

Crowdfunding is one of twenty categories in the third annual round of the international BOLD Awards. Their aim is to recognise and shine a spotlight on crowd-related breakthroughs and innovative people, businesses and projects that are leading the way and setting an example in digital industries. Other categories include AI, Robotics, AR/VR, Crypto, Fintech, Cybersecurity, Agritech, Sustainability…….. here’s the full twenty categories.

Here’s how it works. Entries are submitted online, naturally, and can be viewed by potential voters and continually updated by the entrants. There will be a public round of voting early in 2022, which is an opportunity for entrants to mobilize their communities and “get the vote out.” An international panel of judges will then take a look at the entries, and winners in each category will be decided through a blend of public votes and judges’ appraisals.

Winners will be able to collect their awards at a prestigious black-tie gala dinner on March 25th, hosted by Europe’s largest accelerator hub, H-FARM, on their campus just outside Venice. It will be a unique event, with unrepeatable opportunities to network and connect with leading edge innovators and disruptors among the other winners, the judges, and invited VIPs. Given that crowdfunding is great marketing, here will be your chance to make an impression in person.

Plenty of candidates would be able to enter under several categories. As an example, the Small Robot Company, with its agritech robots controlled by AI and working to improve sustainability, has recently concluded a round of equity crowdfunding in the UK.

Previous nominees in the Crowdfunding category include Startup Italia and Borrow A Boat from the UK.

Entries are open, with the price held at €77 until September 15. If you have worked hard and enjoyed crowdfunding success, get some recognition at the BOLD Awards gala dinner award ceremony in Venice in March 2022. Register to enter now, and maybe I’ll see you next March in Venice.