As many of you know, I’ve been contemplating Kickstarter and Indiegogo to help raise funds on my new documentary film. The reading, researching, and participating has been very helpful. I’ve been pretty middle-of-the-fence on it for a while but had drawn a few conclusions: managing a campaign is a lot of work and kinda risky, but a campaign can be full of potential.

So when I read Christopher Borrelli’s thoughts about crowd funding in “When Kickstarter kicks back“ published by the Chicago Tribune, I felt like someone was finally putting my own words in black and white. Crowd funding is frustrating sometimes but it’s totally fascinating. That’s a pretty great article. Go read the entire thing and tell me what you think, mk?

Reading that article helped me come to a few new conclusions:

I won’t feel like I’d be begging for money by using Kickstarter. I thought I would, but I feel very differently now. Instead, I feel like I’d be offering an awesome opportunity to people that want it. I get asked all the time by family and friends, “You’re making a film? Cool! How can I help?!” Well, this will be a way to make that easier on them. I’m not begging. I’m offering an opportunity to support this awesome film. I really appreciate that.

It’ll also make it easy to keep people updated on the film’s progress. I will have a means and a way to share exciting news about the production on a regular basis with a crowd of people that are invested in it. They’ll get info by email but they can opt out if they don’t want to hear the latest news. I like that, too.

The added accountability is very motivating. I’m big on self-imposed deadlines. But I also like it when people connect with me about some specific promise or deadline like, “Hey, you promised us a t-shirt by December. I got mine in the mail several weeks early. Thank you!” Knowing that people are out there waiting on you to deliver something is incredibly motivating. I appreciate that as well.

I’ve still got a lot of work ahead of me. I’m learning. I’m having some great conversations about crowd funding. There are some good things taking shape right now.

Stay tuned, my friends. More on this soon.