a single source, nothing corroborates it

Go first with a visible amount

When you want other people to contribute, opening with your own money puts a floor under the ask so nobody is being invited to start at zero. Splitting the total into contributions of any size, queued so the next takes over as the last runs out, and thanking each person publicly by name, gets more from many people than one large cheque would.

The method

1. 01

   Go first with a visible amount when you want other people to chip in, so the ask arrives with a floor already under it instead of at zero.

2. 02

   Split a sponsorship into any-size contributions from many people rather than one big cheque, queue them so the next takes over as the last is used up, and credit each contributor publicly by name.

What it returned

• $500

  Independents Hall opened the sponsored tab with $500 of its own money, the stated goal being that no attendee paid for a drink all night.

• At the BlogPhiladelphia party Triumph Brewery donated the appetizers and ran a cash bar; anyone could fund a tab of any size and got named over Twitter as thanks.

Sources

• holy crap, that’s tomorrow: blogphiladelphiaAlex Hillman · dangerouslyawesome.com · 2007-07-01