The Edible Museum: Crowdfunding Campaign
The Edible Museum is a miscellany of weird and wondrous artefacts hand-sculpted artfully from chocolate ranging from perfectly preserved fossils, antiques and anatomy
to sea-life and endangered species.
Created by Sarah Hardy, a classically trained sculptor who had exhibited in galleries and worked on wax work figures and props for museums, Sarah realised she could combine her 20 years passion and experience of art and confectionery with fine Belgian chocolate. She spent 18 months inventing and designing edible artworks from her kitchen table and soon realised that she needed a dedicated space in which to sculpt & paint these lifelike pieces.
So that she could get her venture up and running quickly she opted for crowdfunding to help her match fund a £10k grant that would help her to build a bespoke chocolate studio with commercial refrigeration and workspace.
Marketing Challenge
Crowdfunding to raise funds requires many hats and Sarah built a trusted team around her to help her to adequately advise and help her to set up the elements required, 
prepare for the very intense period while the campaign was running and then deliver the rewards in a timely way following completion of the campaign.
Approach
To Market provided two days of brainstorming to help plan and refine the elements required for her campaign, including the timing and methods of execution.
To Market 
then delivered the six week email marketing campaign to segmented mailing lists, and devised and delivered press releases to selected media outlets.
Sarah reached her funding target and went on to overfunding.
I had collaborated with To Market on a few projects and when the opportunity to crowdfund to grow The Edible Museum came up I knew that I wanted their expertise on board as part of my crowdfunding team.
We initially spent two days brainstorming how to manage and plan for the campaign which helped me to focus on what I needed to accomplish, provided useful advice and creative ideas that we implemented. To Market managed the email marketing throughout the campaign as well as press lists and press releases. We reached our target with time to spare and even overfunded!
The crowdfunding experience is exciting and very intense – working with Jo meant that I had the peace of mind that I didn’t need to worry about that part of the campaign and the tips and advice along were invaluable.
