Startup Canada to Fall Short on Fundraising Campaign?

Two months ago, Startup Canada set out to raise $100,000 to fund Startup Canada Connect, a national online platform for entrepreneurs to plug into the startup community.

At 11:59pm PST tonight the campaign will end on Indiegogo. And unless a number of $25,000 “Startup Benefactors” step up now, the initiative championed by Victoria Lennox will end far short of its goal.

So what went wrong?

Was the fundraising campaign too optimistic with it’s $100,000 goal? Not likely. This campaign was launched after Startup Canada completed a six-month National Tour that brought together 20,000 Canadians and 300 partners through 200 events. That’s a lot of people making an effort to participate.

Was the campaign ill-timed? Most definitely. Organizers would have been better off running the campaign during the six-month tour rather than after with a December 4 start date. During the holidays, wallets are tight and chequebooks are tucked away until after tax season.

Was the campaign simply too long? Yes. According to Indiegogo, length matters. Campaigns that run for less than 40 days are 6% more likely to reach their goals than campaigns that go longer than 40 days.

But most likely the reason the campaign may fail is simply apathy. According to the campaign stats online, right now only 143 people have committed financially to support the initiative. That’s only .00715% of the 20,000 Canadians that so enthusiastically participated in the National Tour.