Running your campaign

Your campaign is live the moment it's published on ardentcrowdfund.com/campaigns. From then until close, the issuer team's job shifts from preparing documents to actively running a regulated fundraising process. What you do, and don't do, during this window materially changes your final raised amount, and SEC Ghana is watching closely. This page is the operational playbook.

Regulated by SEC Ghana

The campaign lifecycle

Every Ardent raise moves through the same six states. Understanding where you are at any moment keeps you, your investors, and the regulator aligned.

Campaign duration

Under the SEC Ghana Crowdfunding Guidelines 2024, an Ardent CrowdFund campaign must run for a minimum of 21 days and a maximum of 90 days. Inside that band, the right window depends on your instrument, target size, and audience:

• Short debt raises (GHS 500k–1m, 12-month tenor) typically close cleanly in 21 to 35 days.
• Standard equity raises (GHS 1m–3m) work best in the 45 to 60 day window.
• Large raises (GHS 3m–5m) usually need the full 90 days, especially if they rely on a multi-stage marketing campaign.

You can shorten the window once you are live only by closing early after hitting your target; you cannot extend it beyond the 90-day cap under any circumstances.

Posting campaign updates

Investors expect, and SEC Ghana requires, at least one substantive update per week while the campaign is live. Good updates do three things: they share real progress, they restate the business's trajectory honestly, and they give non-subscribed prospects a reason to commit.

Updates are drafted and scheduled from the issuer dashboard's Updates tab. Before you publish, our compliance tooling runs a light review for forward-looking-statement language and flagged phrases. Material updates, anything that would change an investor's decision, route through a compliance officer before going live, typically inside a few hours during business days.

Responding to investor Q&A

Every live campaign includes an in-platform Q&A feed. Investors can ask questions publicly or privately; by default, a question-plus-answer pair is published to everyone looking at the campaign once you reply to a public question.

Two operational rules make this part easy:

• Answer within 48 hours on business days. Slow Q&A is the most visible negative signal a prospective investor sees.
• No forward-looking statements. You can describe past performance, current metrics, and existing commercial agreements freely. Anything forward-looking must either already be disclosed in the offer document or it is off-limits, repeat it from the document rather than extending it.

If a question genuinely cannot be answered in public (for example, disclosing a customer's identity), say so in the public reply and offer a private follow-up. Investors respect a clear "we can't disclose this here because…" far more than a dodge.

What counts as a material change

A material change is any event that would reasonably influence an existing or prospective investor's decision to subscribe. During a live campaign that typically means one of:

• A change to the instrument terms, raise target, valuation, or coupon.
• Loss of a contract, customer, or licence disclosed in the offer document.
• A new material contract, acquisition, or regulatory approval.
• A change in directorship, senior management, or 10%+ beneficial ownership.
• A material variance (plus or minus 20%+) between forecast and actual performance during the campaign window.
• Any regulatory inquiry, enforcement, or litigation touching the business.

Promoting your campaign

Ardent CrowdFund lets you run a genuine marketing push, but promotion on a regulated offering is not the same as free-for-all growth marketing. The SEC Ghana rules permit and prohibit specific practices:

• Permitted: links to your campaign page on your own website and social channels, earned media coverage, in-person investor meetings (so long as the offer document is provided), paid advertising that directs to the Ardent CrowdFund campaign page only.
• Prohibited: "invest now for X% guaranteed return" language, testimonials from existing investors or directors, side deals offered off-platform, claims of SEC Ghana endorsement, selective disclosure of information not in the offer document, and any promotion after the campaign closes.
• Paid media mandatory disclosure: every paid post and ad must include a short risk statement and a link to the full offer document.

When in doubt, run the creative by our compliance team before it goes live. Turnaround is usually within a single business day.

What happens at close

When the campaign closes, either at the scheduled end date or early upon hitting your target, Ardent runs an allotment and settlement process automatically:

• If funded (target reached): subscriptions are confirmed, the cooling-off window is honoured, and funds move from escrow to your operating account inside five business days of final confirmation. Securities are then issued and the register updated.
• If underfunded (target not reached at close): every subscription is refunded in full from escrow within five business days. The raise may be relaunched later under a revised offer document, subject to SEC Ghana approval.
• If over-subscribed (more than target): Ardent runs a pro-rata allotment up to the SEC Ghana-approved maximum, with any excess refunded.

In all three scenarios, investors and issuers receive a full settlement statement with every subscription, allotment, and transfer line-itemised.

Funds release process

Once a campaign is funded, the escrow bank releases funds to your corporate account only after all four of these conditions are met:

1. The cooling-off window has expired for every confirmed subscription.
2. The final subscription agreements are counter-signed.
3. The platform register is reconciled against escrow receipts.
4. SEC Ghana has not placed a hold on the settlement (rare, but possible).

Typical end-to-end timing from close to disbursement is three to five business days. You will see a daily status update in the issuer dashboard through the settlement window so there are no surprises.

Next step

Once funded and disbursed, continue to Post-raise obligations for what you owe investors and SEC Ghana for the life of the instrument.