Need money to fund your start-up? Here are three creative ways to get funding for your black business.

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  1. Business Plan Competitions
  2. Donation-Based Crowdfunding
  3. Your Own Offering

Business Plan Competitions

Business plan competitions are a cool way to get funding for your business. Many of the competitions that I found only have minority or women-owned businesses to enter. It’s a cool way to level the playing field. The competitions I found had a very wide range of pay

If you decide to enter a business plan competition you must be prepared to pitch your

How To Find Business Plan Competitions

Google “Business Plan Competitions 2018”. Including the year is very important otherwise you will have to wade through business plan competition winners of every year since the idea was invented.

Donation-Based Crowdfunding

With donation-based crowdfunding, you can raise money for products that don’t exist. In traditional funding, the borrower sells debt or equity to fund their business. In donation-based crowdfunding, typically backers donate money to fundraisers for early access to a good or a service.

The fundraiser uses the donations for the initial production of the good or service. I think it’s difficult to run successful Kickstarter campaigns because (1) most products aren’t cool and (2) it takes excellent digital marketing savvy such as great copywriting, promotional videos, and PR outreach.

Nevertheless, these are hurdles that you can get over! I wouldn’t worry much about point one. If the problem is that your idea is not getting funded because people don’t think it’s cool then that has saved you a lot of time, money, and effort that you would have spent developing something that people don’t like.

For the second point, if you’re an influencer you don’t have to worry about that one. Just go influence the world.

However, for the rest of us, we can get over this hurdle with professional help. There are internet marketers that specialize in crowdfunding that help their clients run successful campaigns. They can help you create the right digital assets and position your product to succeed.

Lastly, people that are non-influencers that are unable to afford internet marketers you can always do it the hard way. At one point in time the influencer as a non-influencer. At one point in time the digital marketer never used a paid ad. Level your skills up and DIY.

Donation Based Crowdfunding Websites

Your Own Offering

Lastly, you can create your own offering to fund your business. Depending on what you’re offering you may have a lot of “red tape” that you have to comply with. For example, if your offering is that someone invests money, is promised a return on their money, but has no control over the business then most likely have created a “securities offering.” Depending on the nature of your offering you may have to certain disclosure and/or filing requirements and/or people you can invest from. Consult with legal counsel to get help with creating your own offering.

Many people start businesses this way. Seasoned fundraisers create offerings and present the offer to investors to fund their business. This just may be the path for you. Contact us if you’re interested in fundraising legal counsel.

Further Reading

The Million-Dollar, One-Person Business: Make Great Money. Work the Way You Like. Have the Life You Want. · Where I learned about business plan competitions (and small million dollar business operations).

Brian
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