2 Surprisingly Valuable Crowdfunding Teammates (who aren’t also your crew)
Never crowdfund alone. Yes, even if you’re crowdfunding partially with the purpose of eventually building your crew; you can’t exactly ask your director to help you promote the campaign if you need a successful campaign to entice them.
As a result, I wanted to talk about the two kinds of people who can (and should) make up your crowdfunding team, particularly when you can’t rely on other project stakeholders before your budget’s in place. In addition to me, your crowdfunding strategy consultant, of course.
The teammate who can do something that you can’t/don’t want to do yourself
This person may not be an equal partner in the work or the rewards, but if you find yourself being bad at graphics/design, finding a teammate who can JUST make graphics/design is hugely beneficial.
Can they write long emails that feel human? Can they maintain a social media presence for you, following a plan/schedule you build for them ahead of time? Can they build you a spreadsheet to organize your process, even if they aren’t executing any of the strategies within?
Finding a few different people to fill in where you feel less confident can go a long way. It always feels like more work to do something you’re bad at/something you resent having to do; relieving some of that often makes the whole process feel more doable.
The teammate invested in the project’s success, for themselves or even for the project itself
These are the folks who will help strategize on materials and offer their email lists (or a portion of them) to the cause, who take it seriously, who might be called “street team” members in another universe.
Again, they probably won’t be an equal partner (this is YOUR project, after all), and they may not even ultimately work on the finished project, but they are excited and interested in being a part of things. This might be a friend or family member who has a similar passion for your story or even for you as a filmmaker. It may also be someone from an aligned organization, or even a fan of your project’s genre, themes, or representational aspects.
These teammates aren’t really directly related to your project, but can help amplify messaging beyond your own network because of a thematic alignment.
For example, the most engaged person on the asexuality subreddit might be an ideal crowdfunding teammate for a movie with an asexual lead, even if they don’t know you. They are invested in more asexual representation in media they like getting made, you’re trying to make more media with asexual leads they’ll like, so a partnership is beneficial to you both! Similarly, if you’re telling a story about mental health or environmentalism and you connect with a nonprofit who supports those causes or people in those demographics, there’s probably a lot of mutual benefit to you raising awareness/empathy and them offering their newsletter audience.
Obviously, the ideal crowdfunding teammate is the people who personally, directly benefit from the campaign’s success. The people who will only get paid (or paid well) once it’s funded. The people who want to get to work on the movie and just need a successful campaign’s go-ahead to get started. But that’s not always possible, or a good use of their time/resources. That’s still not an excuse to resign yourself to crowdfunding alone, though!
This process is a full-time job, a full-blown production in and of itself, for the duration of time you’re undertaking it. Do yourself, your project, and your audience a favor, and ask for help before it’s too late.
Bri Castellini is an independent filmmaker, a romance author, and, regrettably, a podcaster. She’s known for the 2017 short film Ace and Anxious (writer/director, 160k+ views on YouTube) and for her podcasts Burn, Noticed and Breaking Out of Breaking In, covering the USA television show Burn Notice and practical filmmaking advice, respectively. She can lick her elbow (not clickbait). Full work history and ways to hire her as a consultant can be found on her website BriCastellini.com
