Will you crowdfund with me?

Today I want to share with you the seed of an idea 🌱

I hope you’ll join me in helping it grow?

Running our local community space is a full family affair, it has literally taken over my entire life 😅

I was so inspired and energised by most recent crowdfunder for their book, Entwined. What I loved most about it was the size of the community that fed into it - the book contains words from over 55 mothers and all of us jumped at the chance to contribute, share and support the crowdfunder. This felt key to the success of the project and I was so overjoyed that the project got funded 😍.

This led me to thinking - how can I bring some of this energy into my fundraising efforts to support the running costs of our amazing, free community space, The Women’s Health Hub?

I have tried to be very open here about how hard it’s been to create this space, to grow this nonprofit from nothing. You can read my most recent meltdown here 😅.

The impact we’ve already had with this space has been amazing 😍 and with extra funding and paid support this year, the work is definitely feeling … not manageable per se but less all encompassing? I feel like I’m drowning less these days.

To make things easier, so far this year we have

🌱Automated our booking system for the space (this has saved me literal DAYS of stress, work, and anguish)

🌱Created a community WhatsApp group so it is easier for me to contact everyone all at once ❤️

🌱Paid for wonderful freelancers to help with all the virtual assistant support, as well as our amazing Community Engagement member Suzie who does all the networking and peopling that I find too exhausting to do as an autistic woman

One of the things that still really keeps me up at night is money.

The hard reality is that, for us to grow and develop the support we offer, to help the women most at need to attend, to do all of this in a way that allows me to not be working every moment of the day whilst earning enough to feel safe, we’re going to need a significant annual revenue - I’m thinking six figures 🤢.

The idea of bringing in six figures every year still feels like a wild goal. I do think we could do it, with bigger funding bids - but the idea of relying on funders to continue to pay us each year is scary. It feels precarious. It feels like this beautiful home we are making here is simply a house of cards that could fall down at any moment.

I want to continue to find new ways of bringing in our own money.

Alongside my paid for birth support, or the creative workshops I sell or our paid membership here on Substack.

So I’ve had an idea.

I’d love to know what you think.

My idea is to run an annual crowdfunder, where creatives and mentors, coaches and multi-passionates (of which I know a lot of you here are ❤️) would donate perks that can then be sold to supporters, with all monies made going into the non-profit.

Donating a service or a product or a gift card would make you feel all sparkly and good inside but - as we’d all be sharing and promoting the crowdfunder - it would also get your business / product / self in front of all of our respective communities.

You will help yourself grow by helping us grow and you’ll be able to show your commitment to supporting women & women’s health issues by supporting our nonprofit too.

My dream for the crowdfunder is that it will be as big and successful as the Entwined one 😍 with lots of us feeding into it, sharing it and collaborating to make the whole thing a huge success.

Will you join me?

So what happens next?

My vision is to launch the crowdfunder on International Women’s Day - March 8th 2025 - and that it would run for an entire month, leading up to The Women’s Health Hub’s second birthday in April 2025. People would then receive their perks in the weeks and months following.

But before I can even plan a launch, I need perks to offer people 🌸.

So, if this project sounds like something you’d like to get involved with, and you have a perk you’d like to donate - please fill in the short form below 🙏🏻. I’d love to have a mix of big and small contributions so that there really is something for everyone in the final crowdfunder 🌟.

Offer perks here 🌻

If you would like to support the crowdfunder but can’t donate, please do comment here or email me at zoe@postpartummatters.co.uk (or reply to this if you’re reading it in your email inbox!) and we can have a chat ❤️. Any help with scheduling, launching or running the crowdfunder would be so greatly received.

It would be so wonderful if you would share this newsletter with anyone you think would like to be involved. This will help it to grow and to be a wonderful success that can serve us all, whilst supporting those most at need 🙏🏻.

Sending love and solidarity,