From our 140th patron who I met weeks ago online at a Humane Tech podcast discussion event (sent to me as a private email, my highlighting added):
I’ve finally been able to sit down and give Snowdrift my full attention! I am signed up, pledged and will be spreading the word. I love what you’re doing and felt I could get a full understanding of it from the site. I really like the animations that appear around the site too. I felt there was a bit of humanity lacking (as in seeing human faces), and I’m not sure I would have felt confident enough to sign up if I hadn’t had the chance to chat with you about it. So I just wanted to feed that back as I would love to help you succeed in your mission. I can’t believe crowdmatching like this isn’t already a thing - it seems like such an obviously good idea to me!
My thoughts: yes indeed. Originally, we had such a focus with clear team listings including human bio statements and encouraging the team to post personal blog posts that gave human perspective and so on, and all this has been largely lost for various reasons (our tech difficulties, changes, moving things around, won’t go into it here). We need to get it back, and this highlights the importance of it.
Thanks for sharing my feedback @wolftune ! I enjoyed learning more about the team from the wiki page @smichel17 - that’s definitely the kind of trust-building content that would have helped me click the button! I did look around the site quite a bit, but didn’t get that far, so making that link more accessible could help.
I think people really need their hands held to get on board with something new, especially when the concept is unfamiliar. Could the whole concept be explained through an example on one of the main pages, referencing well-known goods/companies? That could make it more real/relatable. Also, seeing a human talk about it (in a video) could help to cement trust, make viewers feel like they know what they need to know and have them sign up before their attention runs out…
Further thoughts - what do you think of the catchphrase ‘Funding by the people, for the people.’?
Also, does Snowdrift already have a list of popular/useful public goods? If not, I thought that kind of resource could be helpful in demonstrating what public goods are, showing the value they offer and also bringing more traffic to the site.
Nice, I can imagine lots of ways to use that. I added it to Snowdrift Wiki - Slogans / Catchphrases / Elevator Speeches (we should collect other such nice phrases that aren’t our top tag-line but are the sort of things we might put on a shirt or in various advertisements and so on.
Incidentally, on the topic here, I wonder if that slogan could be tied into the efforts for human touch. So, “by the people, for the people” could be related to a place that highlights actual people involved…?
I like this too. I think it’s a good complement to “Crowdmatching for public goods” which is more specific, but less easily understood at first by someone not yet familiar with the concepts of crowdmatching and/or public goods. “Funding by the people, for the people” conveys the spirit of what Snowdrift.coop is trying to do, in a way that is immediately understandable. Perhaps in some contexts it could be helpful to use a more specific version such as “Funding by the people, to create public goods for the people.” Definitely not as catchy, but maybe used in combination with “Funding by the people, for the people” it could create both memorability and a more complete understanding.