As you work on your platform, you will most likely encounter this use case at some point: a project has raised money but not enough to achieve its funding goal by its deadline. Should you add more time to let it raise more money and potentially be successful?

In most cases, don’t. Constraints are there for a reason and playing around with them might break the trust your users have in you. Only extend the time if there’s a 99% chance the campaign will be successful. That’s difficult to assess, but it’s more likely if it meets the following conditions:

• Project is at least 80% funded
• Campaign manager is serious and committed
• Campaign manager’s network isn’t tapped out
• Campaign manager knows exactly who in her network is still due to contribute
• You like this project and specifically want it to succeed

Don’t make extending the crowdfunding deadline a habit. If you ever extend the duration of a campaign, find out what happened that forced you to do so, and apply that learning so it doesn’t happen again.