I've fundraised for my own startups before (not fun). But a while ago, I headed up marketing for Kiva.org (a crowdfunding site for entrepreneurs, mostly in the developing world) and found crowdfunding to be a really powerful way to raise money. I also did a Kickstarter a while ago related to poverty alleviation that raised $21k... not a huge sum, but one that helped get the project going.
It sounds like you guys are at a point where you'd like to raise a year's worth of funds upfront, or you're leaning towards burning out and canceling the entire project. This is an ideal situation for crowdfunding: people have a real incentive to donate, as they know their funds will truly make a difference.
I would recommend doing an Indiegogo campaign for $25-30k to get things started. As part of it, you could promise regular updates on how things are going in Afghanistan. At Kiva, people really loved hearing from our entrepreneurs on how the loan was going.
As for marketing the piece, Peretz is a really wonderful writer. Would he be willing to write 2-3 shorter stories about the network, and the impact that it's having in Afghanistan? Then we could share them here on HN (and elsewhere), and link to the crowdfunding campaign at the end of the piece. It also wouldn't be too hard to get an article or two written about this, either in HuffPo, TC or maybe PandoDaily (I haven't worked with Pando before, but it's probably similar to TC). That would definitely drive significant fundraising... plus there are poverty alleviation blogs and social media gurus who would definitely help out.
If you're interested, I'd be glad to help you with the marketing and PR gratis... a project like this makes it incredibly easy to drive publicity and fundraising.
Either way, I wish you all the best with this important project!!
It sounds like you guys are at a point where you'd like to raise a year's worth of funds upfront, or you're leaning towards burning out and canceling the entire project. This is an ideal situation for crowdfunding: people have a real incentive to donate, as they know their funds will truly make a difference.
I would recommend doing an Indiegogo campaign for $25-30k to get things started. As part of it, you could promise regular updates on how things are going in Afghanistan. At Kiva, people really loved hearing from our entrepreneurs on how the loan was going.
As for marketing the piece, Peretz is a really wonderful writer. Would he be willing to write 2-3 shorter stories about the network, and the impact that it's having in Afghanistan? Then we could share them here on HN (and elsewhere), and link to the crowdfunding campaign at the end of the piece. It also wouldn't be too hard to get an article or two written about this, either in HuffPo, TC or maybe PandoDaily (I haven't worked with Pando before, but it's probably similar to TC). That would definitely drive significant fundraising... plus there are poverty alleviation blogs and social media gurus who would definitely help out.
If you're interested, I'd be glad to help you with the marketing and PR gratis... a project like this makes it incredibly easy to drive publicity and fundraising.
Either way, I wish you all the best with this important project!!