Determining the award for your crowdsourcing project can be a bit overwhelming! Thankfully, HeroX is here to help!
First, start by estimating how much time and/or money an individual or team might spend to win it. Then take into consideration what you’re asking competitors to solve and what value that potential solution has. Try to balance that with what your overall budget is (if you’re sponsoring the award yourself) or with what you can realistically raise (if you’re crowdfunding). You can also get input from subject matter experts who are involved in the subject area for their estimation.
For an example, past crowdsourcing projects that were based around art or design ranged from $1,000 to $5,000. App development or brand awareness competitions ranged from $10,000 to $20,000. Large data analysis and other highly technical or complex competitions have ranged from $35,000 all the way up to $1,000,000!
You can also make the IP (intellectual property) structure more appealing to competitors if you don't have a large enough award to balance the amount of worked involved. For example, allow the winner to keep the intellectual property if the award amount is only $5,000 for more technical/niche subject area.
Awards don't always need to be monetary based either. You can offer a contract after the challenge to further develop the winner's solution, fly them out to a conference to present their solution and gain networking opportunities, or meet with a top leader or influencer.
