Disclaimer. I’m bout to tell you and my future self to do a whole bunch of things I didn’t do. This is literally a note to my future self that my life will be easier if I do this stuff before crowdfunding. There is a chance that I will not do any of this but it would behoove me.
Future Justina, develop relationships with media & influencers in an ongoing manner. I still have no idea how to do this exactly but I hear you are supposed to follow them, tag them, start social media convos with people at blogs, news sites, etc. so that when it comes time to launch your campaign and whatnot, they pay attention to it and perhaps give it coverage & don’t side eye you. And perhaps they could teach me how to do this stuff effectively since I have no idea. Johnny Hobbes and I were literally emailing scores of journalists and drafted a HuffPost article – none of which resulted in any media for our project. We tried and we had no idea what we were doing. I am I guess “guilty” of the organic approach to relationship building, but getting journalists’ attention is not an ethical dilemma. It’s literally their jobs to cover good stories. In any case, I’m positive though that just making good, original art and whatnot will lead to people paying attention. The point of this bullet though is that I will start to simply talk to people in media, whether in-person or online.
Future Justina, stop hiding from people who have money. Develop personal relationships with people who have money & keep them up to date on what you’re doing. I know too many poor people. Lemme take that back. I don’t know enough wealthy people. (This isn’t actually true because money is meaningless and I want to smash capitalism in the face but for the purposes of raising money, legit you gotta know people who aren’t completely broke). Though I am overly schooled, I don’t really associate with folks from my undergrad or grad school. I need to stop the foolishness and talk to all types of people. We are all humans. There were a few people who gave $300, $200, $500, $500, etc. and having more of those people would have made it easier to reach our goal with less effort. Future Justina, you’re not better than CEO’s and i-bankers just because you have a manifesto and don’t always pay your rent on time. Anyways, people are people. Get to know them all.
Future Justina, use professional artists to create campaign visuals. We DIY’ed this project and it worked out fine. We have decent eyes for things – but I think we could have reached more people if someone else completed the technical aspects of the campaign, like video editing and graphics. As a director, I have great vision and you probably do too so we can actually invest in other people helping us get to that vision with their expertise. The visuals and videos for campaigns get shared a lot so it’s important that it resonates strongly with people. Though people probably won’t give directly from seeing the videos they will keep you at the top of their brain when you do ask and they’ll know you’ve been dedicating yourself to this.
Future Justina, create the thing with a team FROM THE BEGINNING. Black Man in America started off as my project. Then, my boyfriend joined in. Then, we brought on cast and crew for lots of roles. We made the mistake of starting the project, creating the whole film and storyboard, and THEN trying to bring on assistants (friends) and cast/crew to help us crowdfund. No matter how much our friends and dancers shared links and asked people, we were the major players. Why? We did not create it WITH others from the beginning. Future Justina, if you do this again, create the project with a group from the very beginning. Whether they are producers or cast or what, please.
Future Justina, set clear fundraising expectations that every person agrees on before they come on. If it is not possible or you don’t want to create the project with others so that they feel ownership over it and hence want to actually crowdfund it, then setting clear fundraising expectations would be ideal. We left it up to project participants whether or not they wanted to help out. If we would have said, we expect each project member (cast, crew, assistants) to crowdfund $400 (which is relatively easy) and written that in an agreement, it would have alleviated much stress and made it more of an understood community effort. So future Justina, don’t be afraid of clear expectations.
Future Justina, do a pre-launch and build hype for at least one or two months. Though I definitely started having conversations with lots of people before the crowdfunding campaign, we did not do any formal type of “pre-launch” – meaning we did not have videos, emails, texts, Facebook posts etc. that prepared people for the launch day. We could have used a month to three months to create awareness that we were doing this and then launch so that we didn’t spend most of the time getting people aware of what we were doing.
Future Justina, line up donors who will donate on the launch day. This will help you avoid clawing your eyes out. It is pitiful to visit a Kickstarter page for 5 days straight and no one has given in the first week. For our campaign, nobody gave for the first 48 hours, which isn’t good because launch day is when a lot of people will click the link once and never again. One of the things that I read a lot before this campaign was that people will basically start giving once the project looks like it going to be successful. People want to be associated with success but they also want to make a difference so early givers will be less frequent than late givers. It is most effective if you have people who commit to giving on the first day and then follow up with them the day before and let them know you are grateful for them and what difference they will make. In this campaign, I was freaking out because we did not line up donors and watched the first week go by with not much action! We had a four and a half weeks to raise $16,000 and were at only 10% after the first week. We waited until after we launched to start messaging people to ask for support.
Future Justina, please use an email list of followers who already know you and love your stuff! Yeah, so I just just just opened a Facebook page and just just just started posting on Instagram a few months ago. Needless to say, I did not have an email list or anything when we did crowdfunding for Black Man in America. My esteemed collaborator – aka my boyfriend Johnny Hobbes – did not either so we had to cull through our entire social networks. Yes, I said it. Our entire social networks. To be able to draw from my personal network and people who just love what I’m creating, would be — less stressful to say the least.
but remember i didn’t do any of that fancy stuff! read my step-by-step guide on how we raised $18K the non-fancy way!
To read my beastly step-by-step guide explaining how we crowdfunded $18K with no following or fanbase, click to view this awesomely detailed post I wrote 🙂
a little backstory
It was a chilly January 2018 day in the current dimension when 30-year-old unnecessarily educated Justina, queer artist child of black Panamanian immigrants, learned she had three months until her cushy job would let her go. Stunned that her comfortable safety net had broken, she stared at the email for 60 seconds before she resumed binge-watching Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee. Two weeks later, she had a nervous break down. BUT. Finally, she will play. She will create. And hopefully never work again. Oh, and now she has a journal. More on her/me here.
my money journal: crowdfunding edition
This, my money journal, is a reflection on my successes & failures to make money doing what I actually love. I want to share it with you cuz… I bet you’re on this journey too. In the first series of my money journal, I’m sharing my first big success as an artist. At the end of 2016, I was listening to my boyfriend’s song Black Man in America when a vision for a dance film struck me. Five Black men seated at a white table with guns. Don’t worry. It is nuanced. By January 2017, I was storyboarding. By June, my boyfriend was on board, we determined we needed $16,000 to bring it to life, and we launched our crowdfunding campaign. With no fan base and no real fundraising experience. On August 6th, we filmed. I was freaking out. I had opened a credit card just for this project, was $4,000 in debt and owed our cast and crew $7,000 more. I was all in. By August 20th, 400 backers had given a total of $18,000 for Black Man in America to come to life, exceeding our goal. In this crowdfunding series of my money journal, I’m going to share how we did it, because – imagine what you could do with $5K ,$10K, $20K to bring your visions to life. It’s our tiiiiiiiiime. (Shine bright, shine far…)
