Fear-Free Fundraising

Do ask, do tell

By Holly Million

I’ve been raising money for 20 years. During my career, I have asked people for all kinds of money for all kinds of reasons. However, whether I’m asking for $1,000 or $100,000, I have found that there are some key concepts that rule.

These are my Hella Hot Tips for how to ask people for money. The good news is that this isn’t brain surgery. It’s common sense. If you take these key concepts and use them as your guide for individual donor fundraising, you, too, will raise money.

topics: authors, bay area, diy, funding

Fear-Free Fundraising

Road-tested rules for bang-up fundraising events

By Holly Million

Seems like lately, all the filmmakers I know are ready to party! They’re all throwing fundraising events to raise cash for their films. While I applaud their resourcefulness and dedication to a fundraising tactic of relying upon individual, not foundation, money, I confess that I tremble at the thought of what they are getting themselves into. So many babes in the party-planning woods! They are about to find out how much time, energy, resources, and focus it takes to host a successful fundraising event. How can they ensure the biggest bang for their buck and avoid getting burned?

topics: authors, bay area, directors, diy, funding, producers

Fear-Free Fundraising

How to entice potential donors

By Holly Million

So you’re drafting a fundraising prospect list for your indie film. Looks like it’s shaping up to be the most extensive list of individual donor prospects known to mankind. Good job! It covers your personal connections (everyone from Uncle Ernie to your former Econ 101 professor), people your personal connections can introduce you to who care about the same issues your film covers and known suspects in the community who just love film. You have really done your homework and you even know how much you plan to ask each one of these prospects for. So what’s the problem? Well, I’ll bet you know what you want from them. But do you have any clue what they want from you?

topics: authors, bay area, diy, funding

Fear-Free Fundraising

Are your “friends” worthless?

By Holly Million

There’s a lot of buzz swirling around Web 2.0 and how it’s going to change—well, everything. Indie filmmakers, too, are embracing blogs, tweets, and social-networking, experimenting with how these tools can help them cast, market, distribute, and, yes, raise money for their films.

topics: authors, bay area, directors, diy, filmmakers, funding

Fear-Free Fundraising

On foundations and finesse

By Holly Million

Often, the difference between filmmakers who succeed at securing foundation and government grants and those who don’t is that a light bulb goes off in the heads of the successful fundraisers: They look at it as a game, with rules both written and unwritten, that need to be understood, followed and, in some cases, worked around with finesse.

topics: authors, bay area, diy, funding, independent film

Fear-Free Fundraising

Lightening your fundraising load

By Holly Million

When Tennessee Ernie Ford sang, “You load 16 tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt,” he may have been referring to coalminers’ back-breaking labor. Or, he may have been singing about the life of an indie filmmaker. How much did those grant proposals weigh?

If you’ve followed my columns lately, you may have noticed that in this economic nosedive, I’ve been pushing the idea of asking individual donors you might be able to sway with a personal pitch over trying to get the attention of foundations feeling the financial pinch. Here are five fairly sure-fire ways to make approaching individual donors for funding that much easier.

topics: digital filmmaking, directors, documentary film, funding, independent film

Fear-Free Fundraising

From gauche to great: How donor cultivation makes you a successful film fundraiser

By Holly Million

“I’m going to a party for a nonprofit organization specifically to meet people who might be interested in donating to my documentary," a friend writes. "I’m not (yet) a member of this organization. My question: is it appropriate to be asking for donations at the party, even though I’ve never met anyone from this group before? Any thoughts?”

What my friend is wondering is when is the right time to ask an individual for a contribution for his film. He is worried that if he isn’t bold enough, he will show up at the event to press the flesh only to miss what he sees as his fleeting chance to ask people who care about an issue — one that also happens to be the topic of his documentary — for their support. That hors d’oeuvre tray won’t be the only thing passing by, he thinks. He’s worried that his chance to fundraise will be disappearing faster than those bacon-wrapped meatballs.

topics: bay area, directors, funding, independent film, san francisco film society

Fear-Free Fundraising

What Crisis? Fundraising during an economic meltdown

By Holly Million

When the going gets tough, the tough supposedly get going. The real question is, where exactly do they go? Well, if they are indie filmmakers looking to raise money for their films, they had better go to individual donors. And when they go, they had better do so strategically, that is, armed with a thoughtful, well-crafted plan of action.

Foundations keep their assets in stocks. When the stock market plunges, those assets shrink, and that means foundations have less money to give. Less money means fewer grants. As we head toward the darkest days of the years, filmmakers will be tempted to look toward the light that potential grants seem to offer. You may be one of them, but don’t let your fundraising stop there.