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Audacity Works
Audacity Works
DIY Fundraising without feeling like a jerk
Some tales from the trail on DIY fundraising, and different ways to get funding for your creative work. You need three things to create work: vision, resources, and skill, and it's my opinion that the work is best served when it's approached in that order.
Funding belongs the 2nd of those three facets. We know we need it, we know when we don't have it, so how do we approach going for it without feeling like a douchebag?
My first public ask for funding, on my little ole blog.
My first Kickstarter campaign for the petri dish
Blooper reel from my first Kickstarter campaign
Don't go back to sleep.
xoRachel
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Welcome to Audacity Works, a podcast inspired by and dedicated to the working artist, the creative entrepreneur and generally doing the damn thing. This exists on the premise that the world belongs to those who have the audacity to believe that their lives have value. This is for you From To Audacity Works. I am your host, rachel Strickland, and this is episode number 41, in which we're going to talk about fundraising, specifically DIY fundraising. This came by request of my friend, mira, who's on my mailing list, and she wrote in and she said do-it-yourself fundraising, without looking like a tool, is another topic I fear and desire. Thank you, Mira, let's talk about it. So what does this mean? Do-it-yourself fundraising? The most popular option is crowdfunding using sites like GoFundMe or Kickstarter or Possible. I think there's a lot of them now. So let me take you back in time.
Speaker 1:My very first foray into fundraising was in 2009. I had been studying aerial for two years and the time had come where I needed equipment and I had no money, and everything that I earned like 70% of everything I earned went to my rent, because I was living in San Francisco and working as a go-go dancer and a dancer in several contemporary circus fusion companies like the Vodiver Society and the Nikaia Dance. Long story short, I did not have the almost $500 that it took at the time to buy myself a fabric and to steal carabiners and a swivel, and that was the bare essentials of what I needed to be able to perform using my own equipment, which, yes, you need to have your own equipment. And crowdfunding sites were brand new. Kickstarter was founded in 2009, but I didn't know anything about it. What I did know was that I had a blog called Madam Rex that I had been writing on for years documenting my travels and the people that followed me there were mostly my friends from college and that I had met on my travels. So I knew the time had come.
Speaker 1:I made a post saying I need these things. I can't buy these things. I can pay you back with interest over time If anyone wants to help me out. This is what I need, and I listed out each thing that I needed and what it cost for an aerialist starter kit, and a week later, I had everything that I needed, and if you go back to that original post, I will. I'll put it in the comments. Why not Just read it? Whatever, it's from 2009. There's no comments on that post, but what I did get were a lot of private messages and within the first three days, I had everything that I needed, and this story is just evidence for you. If you don't ask, you won't know, and there are more people that would like to help you than you think.
Speaker 1:But, as Mira said quite aptly, the thing that we have to get over and the real barrier to entry here for do-it-yourself fundraising is not wanting to feel like a douchebag and that's really the meat of this episode, but just for a little bit more of a background in my own experiences with crowdfunding, that was my only blog ask, and after that I learned about Kickstarter in 2012, when I needed to make Genesis, and to make Genesis, I needed to buy a human-sized Petri dish and find someone to fabricate it for me. It took me a year to find a fabricator for that, by the way, and then I had a price point. It was substantially more than I had just lying around on my non-salary as a working artist, full-time artist and sometimes coach. So a friend had suggested Kickstarter to me and was like well, really, what other options do I have? Like I could go into credit card debt, which I don't want to do, or I could try this, which is way more emotionally uncomfortable but, honestly, would be the better option for me. So I tried it and let me tell you, when you're not used to talking to a camera and the first time that you're doing it is asking your friends for money is so awkward. I got a pretty good blooper reel from it. I'll link that in the show notes as well, and I'll also put my original Kickstarter that funded Genesis. I'll put that in the show notes as well if you want to have a look.
Speaker 1:But that was a much bigger ask. Like my first ask that I just did on my little private blog was for about $425, I think. The second ask I needed substantially more. My goal there was $2,000. And I don't know if it was because of the timing, because it was crowdfunding was new. Most of us hadn't really heard of it. Facebook was still like you know, back in the old days it was a friendly place that was mostly just people that you knew, and I had a very supportive and closely knit community where I lived in Seattle, washington, and the project was fully funded within 24 hours, which is absolutely mad. But that's what happened. So I'm telling you what happened and after that campaign I think I've gone on.
Speaker 1:I think I've done like seven crowdfunding campaigns over the course of my career. Usually it's for things that funding couldn't cover. Like there was a contract in Western Australia that I was doing with my good friends, don Pasco and Ruth Battle, and Don got funding for the show and to pay us and to do the research, but didn't get enough funding to pay for my flight, and the flight to Australia is expensive. So we did what we had to do and we started a crowdfunding campaign, and the more I did it, the easier it got. I mean, you just make the thing and then you share it and you hope for the best.
Speaker 1:But the real question here is how to do this without feeling like a tool. That's a very interesting question. Let's look at that for a second. So to make anything, you need three things Vision, resources and skill. Vision is the most important in my opinion. Resources include not only money but also people and expertise. And skill is the least important in my opinion, because really vision is the thing that you need first and skill you will acquire on the way.
Speaker 1:The reason that I'm listing these three things out is because I commonly see artists thinking about this from an inverse perspective, like I will make a thing once I have the skill and once I'm happy enough with my skills. But, my friends, we are not reliable judges of our skill level. We don't have an objective way of judging our own skill level and in any kind of way that's going to be accurate. It's just skewed. It's skewed from the beginning. So if you're thinking about a thing that you want to make a show, an act, whatever, and you're thinking, well, first I need to acquire these skills, just stop, stop that method of thinking, because where is the end point there? Like, once you get what Dislocates flare to back flag, because you can make work that is powerful and effective and successful using the skill that you have now and you can continue building skill and you will throughout your entire career. So I just want to offer that to you as a perspective for a way of looking at how to make the thing vision, resources and skill. My opinion, in that order if you lead with vision, you already have a much more expansive perspective for the capacity of the thing that you're going to create. And the more expansive your perspective, the more room there is within that for making mistakes, and making mistakes is mandatory. So that's another thing that we're just going to have to say right out, right out the gate You're gonna make mistakes, you're going to don't even try to avoid making mistakes, you need those mistakes.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of people feel that, like as Mira said, don't want to feel like a tool, and a lot of people might not want to pursue do it yourself fundraising because they don't want to fail and they don't want to make mistakes on the way. But we're going to and that's fine and let's continue. Looking at this from a bird's-eye view right to create work requires resources, depending on where you live. These resources can be gathered a few different ways. One you can pay for it yourself with money that you have earned totally viable option To you can apply for and receive funding from a governing body or Some other kind of organization that supports artists in their work. If you're interested in going this option, I hope that you live somewhere where there's lots of resources available to you. Insider hint try your local arts council, who knows? Just try, there could be money there. And a third option is you crowdfund and you raise the funds yourself.
Speaker 1:And this is where we end up feeling like a tool, because we're asking our friends in our family and our communities for money To do something, and that's where the real self judgment begins. Because I want to offer you a perspective here. What we worry about is looking like a tool, looking like a jerk, looking like a douchebag, but the real thing that's happening is you think you're a tool. It's you that are judging yourself as a douchebag, and this is so often the case where we believe that the thing that we fear is Judgment and ridicule ridicule by our peers and our community but the real thing that we're up against is judgment and ridicule from ourselves. This is how gremlins work, and they do their jobs very, very well. Gremlins exist to keep you as small, invisible and convenient as possible. They don't want you to grow, they don't want you to be seen, they don't want you to be expansive and they definitely don't want you to make really cool new art. This is built in, it's put there by your nervous system, because going outside of those comfort areas is a very dangerous place and the nervous system always, always wants to feel safe. It appears we have the opportunity to learn a new skill, and that skill is being comfortable with the discomfort.
Speaker 1:As an American, I have a very American perspective on using money to create work, and this perspective has been highly influenced by my experiences working within the artistic landscapes of Australia and Ireland. In these ecosystems, it's extremely normal to be able to not expect, but to include funding through a governing body or an arts council as part of the creation process. Obviously, if you're going to make something, it needs to be funded. I thought that was just wild. When I heard it for the first time, I did not understand what my friends were telling me and they were like oh, we got funding to come to the festival. I'm like you got funding to come to a festival and learn with no product required. On the other end of that, they're like yeah, that's why we have artists in our country. I'm like wow, the fact that we have artists in the United States is just bonkers, because there's so little support for them. And that's why I really want to offer you the following perspective Knowing, without a doubt, that creating work requires resources, including money, and also knowing that you may not have any resources available to you, but you still want to create that work, feeling like a tool for needing to ask for money so that you can create that work is a product of your conditioning and it's extremely understandable and you didn't put it there.
Speaker 1:Feeling like a tool for needing to crowdsource funding to make a piece of work or to make whatever it is that you're making, is kind of born out of being exposed your entire life to a supremacist, patriarchal social structure that tells you if you had what it took, you'd already be successful. Or you should never need to ask for money or support even though you're not getting it from anywhere else. And I want to invite you to consider the fact that this is not likely in line with your value system at all, like your true value system, not something that was imposed on you from an outside source, but your value system. Obviously, you need resources to make work and you can either earn those resources yourself, which means that you have a lot of time and a lot of income from somewhere else, like that's cool, great. You can get it from a governing body or an arts council or some other organization there to support artists, or you can ask other people for it, which is do-it-yourself fundraising. So if we can get through that muddy experience of feeling like a jerk because you need to ask your community for help.
Speaker 1:Remember that crowd crowdfunding and crowdsourcing funding for work is an act of consent. No one has to give you money. If they do it, they do it because they want to. It's consent between two grown-up people. So you're not, you're not taking anything from someone else by asking for it. You're offering someone an opportunity to consent to support you or not, and then that is their choice. This is the same way that Patreon works. Right? It's a. It's a relationship of consent, and if they don't want to, they don't have to. That's fine, but I do want to offer you the possibility that there are more people that would like to help you than you realize, and there are more people that believe in what you're doing than you realize.
Speaker 1:Now another sticky thing that comes up around this point in the conversation and if you're like okay, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna make a crowdfunding whatever, and I'm gonna use this platform it has the best fees, by the way. I don't know which one that is. Just do a little bit of research, you'll find one that works for you. But once you've decided to do it, the next barrier that a lot of people stumble on are rewards. I'm like okay, what am I gonna offer for rewards? And this is where you may be tempted to really over deliver on your end and try to make your rewards like way too much, frankly, like here. As an example, I'll give you something from my first Kickstarter campaign. These were the rewards that I offered for a $500 donation Get on the list of premium donors, public gratitude, a postcard, a recipe, an invitation to the show, a DVD and improvised performance on Hoop to your favorite song, a one-hour private class in Stretching, strengthening or Aerial Hoop or Fabric, and I'll make you a batch of gumbo and drop it off at your house.
Speaker 1:That is too many things and, what's more, nobody actually wants all of those things, like I, because one of the things that I saw that I had of value was my ability to teach the skill that I was doing. I offered, you know, private lessons and in a conditioning class at the school that I was teaching at Emerald City, trapeze Arts, and no one took me up on either of those Like, they just wanted me to make the thing. They didn't actually want a conditioning class, they didn't want a private lesson, they just wanted me to go make the thing. So as you start searching for rewards like get mad creative, get super personal, like what, what can you offer that's going to be easy for you to deliver and deliver over and over again. One thing that I totally struck gold with on my first Kickstarter campaign was that I offered a recipe for gumbo that was um, that my stepmother taught me and that I then altered to suit my own desires, and I had a vegetarian option and I had a meat-eaters option, and that was a great reward because it was super personal, it was from like my life, from my family, and it was easy to deliver.
Speaker 1:And if you need ideas for things, don't assume that you know what, what people want, because you're going to get all up in your head and you're like, well, who's going to want this and I think we need to do more? And you know, fly them here and put them up and let them sleep in bed with you and like, just no, don't like pump the brakes and think about things that are easy for you to deliver, that are personal and, no, it does not need to be a physical object. There are, oh, just thousands of examples of campaigns that you can comb through and look for examples that you think are fun and intriguing. You're like, well, that would be a fun reward. Like I would like to get that and start thinking about it like a fun buffet instead of this big amorphous, pressurey thing that's on you, and try to have a good time with it.
Speaker 1:So that is the story of do it yourself fundraising, um, without feeling like a tool One. I'm not here to tell you that your feelings are wrong, but I am here to tell you that if you feel like a tool for asking for something that's necessary, then that's that's not on you, that's conditioning, and social conditioning is a lot like a sliding glass door you may know it's there, but it's still going to stop you. Like you can see through it, but if you walk into it it's still going to stop you. And and that, my friends, is part of the work that we are here to do so, vision, resources and skill. You're not taking anything from anyone by asking for assistance. You are offering them an opportunity to join in your vision by an act of consent, and if they don't want to, then they don't have to and that's fine.
Speaker 1:And, lastly, it just really underscores this axiom that the the most valuable thing that you can have as a working artist is a supportive community. Actually, I lied. There is one more thing when you, if you do decide to create a campaign, don't send it to someone that you never talk to with with like no words. Like I get a lot of these. They're not even requests, because there's no request being made, but someone will just send me a link to a crowdfunding campaign with no words, and I and we like don't talk and don't have much of a relationship, I'm like, oh, I think I'm just going to ignore that. You know what I mean. Things that you can kind of, you can kind of just glean from yourself. Like don't just send someone a crowdfunding link, like say something to them and remember that it is all by consent and if they don't support you, it doesn't mean they don't like you and it doesn't mean that they don't want you to make the thing that you want to make. Sometimes people just ain't got money right now and maybe they don't have the spoons.
Speaker 1:So you, you have to be able to sustain doing this without feeling like every no or implied no is a personal rejection of yourself. It's hard work. It's hard work and it's a lot of emotional labor, but it does get easier the more that you do it and, honestly, just the fact that you're doing it in the first place massive respect. So much respect to you and good luck. I hope that you love what you find, I hope that the process becomes inexplicably fun to you, and I hope that you make a big mess and also get everything that that you need to make the thing that you want to make.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being here letting me talk in your ear for 20 minutes. If you have requests for future episodes, you can always reach me on instagram at rachel strickland creative, or on patreon at rachel strickland creative, or you can just come up to me if you see me. That happened last week. It was awesome. I'll be doing that one next week. Extra, extra special. Thank you to my incredible patrons for supporting me in an active consent so that I can put this work out into the world. This would not exist without you. Thank you for standing by me. Happy august, everybody. Don't go back to sleep.