Kickstarter Goes Canadian (and British)

Canadians who want to crowdfund a film, video game or other project can now start building a page on Kickstarter, for public launch as soon as Sept. 9.

U.S. crowdfunding giant Kickstarter announced on its blog Monday that effective immediately, Canadians were invited to click on the "start your project" button on the company's homepage. Canada has now been added to the U.S. and U.K. in the drop-down menu that pops up.

The New York City-based Kickstarter announced in June that it would soon start allowing projects from Canadian creators. As of Tuesday, the company's own statistics say it has helped raise $627 million for 109,294 projects since it launched in 2009, including the high-profile Pebble smartwatch, Ouya gaming console and Veronica Mars movie.

Kickstarter takes five per cent of the money raised by projects that meet their fundraising target, while another three per cent plus 20 cents per pledge typically go to the company that processes the payments. Funders do not pay the money they pledged and Kickstarter does not receive any money for projects that don't meet their fundraising goal.

In conjunction with its Canadian launch, Kickstarter is hosting a series of meetups and workshops across the country over the next few weeks, which are posted on its Canadian homepage. As of Tuesday afternoon, events in Toronto and Montreal between Aug. 8 and Aug. 13 were sold out.

While Canadian projects previously had access to other crowdfunding platforms, such as San Francisco-based Indiegogo and Vancouver-based Fundrazr, Kickstarter is by far the largest and most popular, generating a much larger volume of web traffic, according to the Crowdfunding Press Center blog. Consequently, it potentially provides access to a larger community of funders and therefore more money.

Helping CARFAC

We invite all CARFAC BC members in good standing to participate in our inaugural postcard fundraising event, Wish You Were Here taking place on Friday June 22 at Woodward’s Atrium, 111 West Hastings Street, Vancouver from 10 AM - 6 PM.

All work by members will be exhibited and priced at $50 each. The cut is 50/50 between artist and organization. There are no extra fees past the necessary self addressed stamped envelope (SASE). If you would like to renew or become a new member to be eligible to show, please go to: http://www.carfacbc.org/join.

To participate:

1. Send in up to 5 original images for sale on a 5" x 7" (12.5 x 17.7 cm) surface (ie; canvas board, paper or panel) using any media. The image itself may be smaller, as long as the outward dimension is 5" x 7".
2. Remember that every art piece will be priced at $50 so create accordingly!
3. Print on the back of the artwork where the address on a postcard is traditionally placed: 

• your name
• the title of the piece
• the materials used d. the date of completion e. contact info for the buyer (ie; mailing address, phone number, website) f. you may also provide a P.S. (personal statement) for the new owner.

Then:

1. Mail or hand-deliver your unframed and unmatted pieces in a sturdy envelope with a SASE by June 8, 2012 to: CARFAC BC Wish You Were Here Fundraiser, Suite 100, 938 Howe Street, Vancouver, BC V6Z 1N9
2. Please also fill out the on-line form at our website: www.carfacbc.org and email to: bc@carfac.ca
3. If you would like your work to be posted in the Wish You Were Here preview page as part of our promotional packaging, please also include a 72 dpi jpeg of each image in the email. If you need us to scan and post your images, please indicate in the email that we have your permission. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to pay copyright fees for on-line use, so denying permission is well within your rights.

Cheques and any unsold work will be mailed out in the SASE provided by the artists within 30 days of the sale. Any unsold work that is not accompanied by a SASE and is not picked up by December 15, 2012 will become the property of CARFAC BC.

We will be sending participating artists jpeg invitations which we hope you can forward to your contact list. 

We wish to see many of you at the show too! 

Selling Myself to Raise Funds

I am "living" a great fundraising scheme  that I think others may find it worthy of consideration.

Last Spring, I wanted to spend a lot of time in France. I am a born-again Francophone. And I wanted to lose weight and get out of some of our cold weather, and being retired and self-pensioned, I could afford to go for a longish time.  So I decided to walk from Paris to Marseilles on a lark. I had never done anything like that before: at 63, it was a considerable challenge and good for a man who has had 2 heart attacks. At the last moment, and on a whim, I wrote to a most all of my friends to say I was taking on this challenge of walking 1200 K and losing 40 pounds and I asked them if they would make a pledge to PAL Vancouver, and pay up if I made it.  Long story short: many problems, didn't turn out the way I had hoped, but I walked the1200 K and raised 18 grand for PAL. 

Last Fall, PAL hosted a "thank you" party in their theatre for all my sponsors. I presented my slides and PAL had lots of great refreshments and my donors/sponsors met some residents and saw the place. They were delighted all round. Their donation helped PAL, got them access to my blog that recounted the whole journey and they were proud and happy to have helped me achieve MAJOR goals that really, really fulfilled me!!!  I had a fabulous experience and lost 40 pounds. It was win/win/win (donor/charity/me).

Now, having been a technical writer all my life and having ALWAYS wanted to write a script, I have reserved a week in the PAL theatre and I am going to stage six performances of a piece I am working on (in collaboration with many coaches) in April 2013 and every single cent of box office will go to PAL—not net profit, GROSS box office because the cost is worth the experience for me just as the walk was.

The "idea" here is that I, a reasonably comfortable fan of a charity, had a self-challenging bucket list—many of us want to lose weight, stop smoking, take a degree. Many of us harbour dreams that we really want to achieve but that we lack the drive to get done. So I found a way to achieve anything I want: declare my goal to all my friends publicly; the bonus is that my challenge becomes a huge benefit for my charity. 

The show is another challenge and all my friends and their friends are enthusiastically promising to attend my show. They are as excited as I am about the project and I am about to start another blog tracking the development of this project as well. 

The elephant in the room here is my self-esteem. I have suffered all my life from a lack of self worth that has prevented me from achieving my greatest dreams, but when I take on challenges for PAL and ask for the support of my friends, I feel like what I am doing is for PAL not for me, that my projects are about PAL, not me. That PAL is the big beneficiary and that I am asking for their help for PAL, not me. But it all really helps me achieve major dreams. Can you understand what I mean or see how magic this is for someone like me. I feel like the biggest winner on the planet, but so does PAL and so do my friends.

My fiends all make fairly modest donations—the largest were $66; most were $200-$300; many, many were modest. And many said things like: "I can not afford large donations, so I do not donate because I am embarrassed to make small donations." But they saw their small donations add up to 18 grand (I had 121 sponsors and I knew every one except one of them). One of my sponsors said at the thank you event: "Wow, I gave you 50 bucks but tonight I got treated like I donated all 20 grand!"

Wishing I Were American

Artspire in an amazing initiative for artists and arts organizations in the US makes me jealous.

Launched last fall by the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), Artspire.org is a new community website that empowers individual artists and organizations anywhere in the country to support their work with tax-deductiblecontributions while building entrepreneurship and creating a robust social network of supporters. 

With Artspire, artists can leverage the power of crowdsourced funding to galvanize and expand their roster of followers, thus building sustained financial backing for their work.
Artists connecting with Artspire will find a virtual home that combines innovative technology with hands-on personal support to provide a critical suite of resources and services that are easily accessible throughout the fundraising process. 

“Artspire is one of NYFA’s most important digital initiatives and the most significant change in the program’s history,” said Royce.  “By giving artists the tools they need to expand their audience and find new funding sources, the site positions them to fully actualize their entrepreneurial potential and enables them to create an inter-connected online community that is invested in their long term success.”

Crowdfunding

I wrote a while back about "Kickstarter." What I did not know at the time I wrote that post, was that it is part of a movement called Crowdfunding. Crowdfunding can be a successful online fundraising strategy if you are willing to put in the start-up time, have a reasonably large social network who you are not afraid to ask to donate to your project.

There is lots of information on this phenomena online and there are many resources besides the Kickstarter site that I have already mentioned.

IndieGoGo is another site. It is different from Kickstarter in that there is no deadline for funding and you can keep what you raise even if you do not raise all you need. This allows you to fund a project in stages or to adapt a project to available funding.

Unique Artist Fundraising Strategy

Ceramic artist, Joseph Sands ran out of money building his studio and retail outlet before he built his kiln, he came up with a novel way of raising the money without incurring debt. He pre-sold certificates that were redeemable for finished products at the sales events of his studio. He raised all the money he needed quickly and built up a considerable client base. It is a clever way to raise funds that can be applied to many practices with a little creative thought.

Joseph Sand: We offered certificates in increments of $50 to purchase bricks for the new kiln. This money helped us buy the supplies needed to build the kiln, and the return for the investor was that these certificates could be redeemed for their full value at the first kiln opening sale, or at any future kiln sale.

Investors were also given an invitation to a special pre-sale of pots from the first kiln opening, giving them the opportunity to view and to purchase pots before the general public. We figured that it would be a win-win situation for all involved.

The campaign lasted approximately six months and ended about two months before the first sale so that we could make sure that all investors received their certificates.

Once the investors sent us money, we printed an official certificate and mailed it to them. We kept everyone informed of our progress through email, on Facebook, and on the website. About three weeks before the first kiln opening, we mailed out a special invitation for the sale.

Read the article in Ceramic Arts Daily. And thanks to "Erin M." for the tip.

Funding: Kickstarter

Kickstarter is an interesting site for creators needing funding. The link was provided to me by one of my students at Emily Carr Univeristy of Art + Design. The quote below is from their website.

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.
A new form of commerce and patronage. This is not about investment or lending. Project creators keep 100% ownership and control over their work. Instead, they offer products and experiences that are unique to each project.
All or nothing funding. On Kickstarter, a project must reach its funding goal before time runs out or no money changes hands. Why? It protects everyone involved. Creators aren’t expected to develop their project without necessary funds, and it allows anyone to test concepts without risk.
Each and every project is the independent creation of someone like you. Projects are big and small, serious and whimsical, traditional and experimental. They’re inspiring, entertaining and unbelievably diverse. We hope you agree... Welcome to Kickstarter!