Recently after discovering that our inventory of the book "Food For Recovery" was low, I decided that it was time to focus on an Updated and Expanded Fourth Edition. I made the announcement on social media, launched this blog to share the journey, and then got to work. Shortly after that the computer I was working on died.
After being told the computer (bought in 2003) could not be fixed, I realized the nonprofit needed a new one or I would be writing "Food For Recovery" on my iPad. That's when I decided it was time to run a fundraiser for the nonprofit. To be honest, I hate fundraising as I would rather be cooking, baking, tweeting, blogging, or writing "Food For Recovery" so I thought I would try something different to raise the funds to make it "more fun". Someone suggested crowdfunding and I thought why not?
All I knew about crowdfunding was the story I read about the man who raise $55,000 for potato salad after asking for ten dollars. I was excited to get going so I went on Kickstarter, set up the account, read the suggestions, submitted the proposal for the nonprofit and once it was approved, I launched the project. I then posted the project on Facebook, tweeted about it on Twitter, and posted it on Google+ as suggested. And then I waited for the "backers" to appear and I waited and waited.
What has happened and not happened since I launched this project was not what I expected. First, let me say in the past when we raised the funds for our nonprofit projects, I would write a grant proposal to a foundation, corporation, or treatment center and give it to Dr. Beasley. He would go meet with them and then we were "funded" with a check arriving in the mail. Now that Dr. Beasley is no longer able to help with fundraising, I am discovering how hard yet very important fundraising is in running a nonprofit.
While I have not raised any funds to date on Kickstarter, I did receive book orders on AddictionEnd.org (the nonprofit's website) for the print version of "Food For Recovery" since launching the Kickstarter project. These book sales resulted in the very few existing copies of the First, Second, and Third Editions of "Food For Recovery" being sold out. I then had to update inventory on the website and return the funds to the customers for the orders I could not fulfill.
The next day I received an email from a physician at a treatment center who was looking for "Food For Recovery" on Amazon but could only find the First Edition which was being sold for $68.35 to $401.85 for "new" copies by "sellers" on Amazon. It appeared that while I (one of the author's of the book) was having a hard time raising the funds for the ebook project on Kickstarter others were using the rules of supply and demand to increase their prices of the print version on Amazon.
With 38 days left to meet our goal on Kickstarter, I would like say that while our Kickstarter project is not for raising funds for potato salad, we do have a very healthy and delicious potato salad recipe in our "Food For Recovery" ebook :-).
Health and Happiness,
Mary P. Cheney, B.Sc., P.T.A.
You Can Learn More About Our Project Here: http://kck.st/1KnOG5g
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