Meeting with potential investors is an effective way to find money for a small business.
There are as many ways of finding money from social ventures in small business as there are businesses. The concept is ancient: talk to people, tell them what you need, discover how you can help one another and try to achieve your funding objective. The modern funding world is fundamentally the same, but with faster, more efficient technology. Your friends, family and associates make up your core social circle. Mentors, employers and past clients can expand that reach. Finally, online social networking completes the puzzle. Whether you seek to offer an investment opportunity, attain loans or request grants or donation-based funding, the money is out there. Just tap your social life.
Instructions
1. Prepare your communications materials. Before you can begin finding money for a small business from social ventures, you must have the necessary information on hand with which to make your case. Create a comprehensive business plan, an elevator speech, a teaser email, a slide presentation, a business card and any other necessary marketing collateral. Be ready to hand over information to the right person in any eventuality.
2. Reach out to your friends, family, associates, mentors, past clients and others whom you have known well for many years. These are your core social group, and they can be an extremely valuable resource when looking to find money from social ventures in small business. Tell them what you are doing, why you need funding and what type of funding you seek. Ask them for referrals to private equity capitalists, their contacts at grant-making institutions, connections to lenders that make loans to small businesses like yours and people willing to donate money to business ventures they believe in.
3. Target the investors you wish to reach, and try to establish personal contact with them. Do not simply knock on every door of every grant-making organization in the country, as that is a waste of time. Discover what individuals and organizations in your social circles might be able to help you, and gear your marketing strategy towards them.
4. Use your online social networks. Facebook, Twitter and even email can be effective avenues to finding money from social ventures. Tell folks what you are doing and why you need their help. Ask them for referrals just as you did in Step 1. Follow the golden rule of online fundraising: reciprocate by helping your online contacts in their own endeavors.
5. Set up a crowd-funding profile if you are looking to secure donations in exchange for rewards. Crowd-funding allows you to present your business or project to large numbers of people, reach out to them, get them involved financially and in others ways and reward them with perquisites (free merchandise, services, etc.) for their support.
