Documentary filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder makes a rare trip in front of the camera for the Kickstarter campaign for her film “Approaching the Elephant.” She hopes to raise enough money to finish the film and submit it to festivals. (photo: Sara Morrison)
In the living room of her Brooklyn apartment, Amanda Rose Wilder carefully adjusts the focus on her Panasonic DVX-100. Handling a video camera is nothing new for the 28-year-old documentary filmmaker, but the subject of today’s shoot is: it’s Wilder herself. The video is part of a fundraising campaign she’s about to launch on Kickstarter.com, a so-called “crowdfunding” platform that artists and entrepreneurs across the country are turning to in increasing numbers. Wilder needs $12,000 to finish “Approaching the Elephant,” her documentary about a New Jersey free school. After two years and eight rejected grant applications, Wilder sees Kickstarter as the best way to raise that money.
She’s not alone. Since the site’s April 28, 2009 launch, over 11,500 projects have raised about $85 million, according to company spokesman Justin Kazmark. The idea is simple: the artist, or “project creator,” to use the site’s terms, posts a “creative project” that needs funding, a goal amount, and a deadline to raise it by. If the goal is met, the project creator gets the money. If not, he receives nothing. Kickstarter profits by taking 5% of however much is raised by every successful project. Kazmark says about 44% of the projects meet or surpass their funding goals. In a time when people have less money to give, these are incredible numbers.
The Manhattan company’s breakout success is not just an anomaly in the current economy — it may also be because of it. As traditional means to fund projects such as grants or venture capital are harder to come by, more people are turning to Kickstarter to raise the money instead. David Rogers, who teaches digital marketing at Columbia Business School and is the author of The Network is Your Customer, attributes Kickstarter’s success to its collaborative platform and the way the site has evolved into a way to raise capital for commercial products through the site’s backer rewards system, where people who donate certain amounts are given gifts that usually tie into the project they’re backing. Kazmark agrees, insisting that project backers are part of a “value exchange” rather than simply donating money. Indeed, the most funded project in the site’s history is more capitalistic than artistic: a kit that converts an iPod nano into a watch, which raised $942,578 — 6,283% of its $15,000 goal – by “rewarding” backers at the $25 level with one of the kits, thereby allowing them to buy it for $10 less than its retail price. Rogers expects more business ventures like this to pop up on the site in the future: “young people can’t find jobs, so they have to be entrepreneurial.”
Kickstarter’s original project creators are its three founders: Perry Chen, Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler. Chen came up with the initial concept in 2002 when he was unable to put on a concert because he couldn’t risk losing money if it didn’t sell enough tickets to cover the costs. This got him thinking of ways to minimize risk by funding projects up front. Three years later, he was waiting tables at Williamsburg’s Diner, where Strickler, a music critic, was a regular customer. Chen and Strickler talked about Chen’s idea for about a year before pulling in Adler, a friend of Chen’s with web design experience. Like many of the projects their site would go on to host, they relied on friends and family to raise the initial seed money.
The site’s success has allowed the company to expand from four employees to its current roster of 28 – and still hiring. About half the employees work on the technical side, designing and developing the site, while the rest are members of the “community team,” charged with updating the site’s blog and sifting through over 300 daily project proposals to make sure they meet the site’s guidelines (about 60% of the projects submitted are given the go-ahead, Kazmark says). Films and albums are the site’s most common projects, but several less conventional ventures can be found there, too, such as a pillow exchange (labeled as “conceptual art”), two different dance performances based on the music of Radiohead, an interactive novel, a Splenda-powered time machine, and two separate companies trying to market new concepts in underwear. Kazmark cites “Mysterious Letters,” a “nonfiction project” in which letters were written and sent to all 600 residents of Pittsburgh’s Postal Hill neighborhood on the same day, as an early project that piqued the interest of many of Kickstarter’s staff, including one of its founders — Strickler is listed as its first backer.
Adam Schatz takes the stage at Spontaneous Construction, a show his jazz advocacy non-profit, Search and Restore, presents every Friday night at Blue Note Jazz Club. Schatz raised over $76,822 through Kickstarter last year for improvements to the non-profit’s website, such as videos of jazz concerts like this one. (photo: Sara Morrison)
Two miles across town from Kickstarter’s Lower East Side headquarters, in Greenwich Village’s Blue Note Jazz Club, 23-year-old Adam Schatz prepares to host a weekly improvisational jazz show presented by Search and Restore, Schatz’s non-profit company dedicated to promoting New York’s jazz scene to younger audiences. Last year, Schatz decided the company’s website needed artist pages and concert videos, but his application for a $75,000 grant was rejected. That’s when he decided to give Kickstarter a try. Schatz set a goal amount of $75,000 and a deadline of two months, then got to work trying to raise the money. “I made it my full-time job,” Schatz says. It paid off: by the time the campaign ended on December 6th, 591 backers pledged $76,822. A few days later, the money, minus Kickstarter’s take, was in his bank account. “It was the most inspiring thing in the world to me,” Schatz grins.
Not all Kickstarter projects are successful. Kianga Ellis, 37, tried to raise $25,000 for her project, The New York Group Show, last May. The money would be used to exhibit the works of five artists selected by the project’s backers as part of their $25 pledge reward. Three weeks later, she only made $1,027 in pledges from 34 backers. Ellis, who says she still “really believes in [Kickstarter’s] micro-philanthropy model,” attributes the failure to the fact that she just wasn’t passionate enough about the project. She believes she could have raised the money if she really worked at it, but this was not the project she wanted to “cash in” her “internet following chips” to fund. Schatz agrees: “You’d better believe in what you’re doing. Kickstarter really imposes on your personal network.”
Wilder is ready to impose on her personal network. The personal appeal for funds she’s making in her pitch video and the passion with which she describes her project will be the key to her project’s success, she believes, which is why she wants it to be perfect. “I’ve said ‘Hi, my name is,’ way too many times,” she laughs. Though she’s confident that she’ll meet her $12,000 goal, she knows there’s no guarantee. “It could be potentially really embarrassing, but there’s something kind of fun about it, too. It’s sort of like a game,” she says; “do you like me enough to give to my movie?”
-
artmoneynyc posted this
