I will probably repeat this 17,000 times during this crowdfunding series, but I just want to illustrate for you an important point. No, literally, let me show you an illustration of where our crowdfunding backers came from. If you don’t know me, we had a campaign to raise $16K for a short dance film called Black Man in America in 2017 and we exceeded our goal by $2000. Here’s where our backers came from:
Ding, ding, ding! It was Facebook! 275 backers (60% of our backers) pledged $10,213 and came from Facebook. Specifically, those backers came from personal Facebook messages we sent. My and my partner’s personal circles (phone and email contacts) are pretty small so we had to draw on our acquaintances and larger community. If there’s anything I learned from crowdfunding 18K is that, without any type of following or organizational partnerships, we succeeded because we sent effective personal messages to almost all of our Facebook friends.
Personal means that it was a message that was directly sent to a friend WITH their name and some detail specific to them. I highly discourage anyone from sending group messages – for example, an email where people are cc’d or bcc’d because it’s lazy and people will ignore the email if they think it was sent to a group.
Point blank! Direct asks were a savior for us so think about your project and what would be possible if you didn’t shy away from asking your wide Facebook network to donate to your project. If you’re still afraid to do that, I have a great post on how to transform your fear of crowdfunding 🙂Â
download the exact Facebook messages we used to raise $18K
It’s not only that we sent Facebook messages, but that we sent effective ones. click to the right to get the messages we used.
and get my step-by-step guide on how we raised $18K
To read my beastly step-by-step guide explaining how we crowdfunded $18K with no following or fanbase, including how we wrote effective messages to potential donors, click to view this awesomely detailed post I wrote 🙂Â
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. Â 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…)
