The Real-Life Orange Is the New Black

What is your crowdfunding campaign?

15 Days of Transformation for Women in Prison. We are trying to raise $15,000 in 15 days to help women leaving one of Canada’s federal prisons to successfully reintegrate back to the community so that they permanently leave a life of crime!

How is your progress so far?

It is going well, after 3.5 days we have raised 45% of our goal through 79 donations, 647 people have visited our profile, and 264 people have shared the site.

What lessons have you learned from running this crowdfunding campaign?

That you need to plan far in advance. We are a little behind but it’s not too bad. I think the strength of our campaign is daily champions who blog on our profile, and share the message about the campaign to their contacts through social media, email, and in person.

Some of our champions have a very high profile in our local arts community, business sector, and the local political arena. We have members of Canadian and Ontario parliaments on board as well as one of the mayors in our area.

We hope to raise all of the money for our campaign but believe that this initiative will also help to raise awareness about the organization (Community Justice Initiatives) and the need to help women in prison not just punish them.

What are your hopes for the next week?

I would love to see us hit $15,000 by next Wednesday so that we can increase our goal. We need a total of $25,000 to fill a funding gap but we wanted to make our goal manageable to start with.

How can people help?

By giving $30—we just need 500 people to give $30 and we will meet our goal. It is also very helpful if people share our site with others and/or follow us on Twitter or on Facebook.

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Visit Sandra’s campaign site to help women reintegrate back into the community.