Fear-Free Fundraising

Road-tested rules for bang-up fundraising events

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

Road-tested rules for bang-up fundraising events

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

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

How to entice and reward potential donors

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: bay area, filmmakers, funding, how-to

In Production

Marissa Aroy unearths forgotten California history

The trailer for The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW opens with the smooth, lush strains of a Nat King Cole song, hardly the vibe one anticipates from a historical doc about rural California, immigration, organized labor and racism. Next-generation filmmaker Marissa Aroy may have a non-conformist streak, but the tune isn’t a non sequitur. Her film excavates the history and contributions of Filipino farmworkers in the Golden State since the 1920s, and the song happens to be a Filipino standard. “There’s a connection between the U.S. and the Philippines that not a lot of people know about—the colonial relationship—and having Nat King Cole brings together the ties of the two countries in an unusual way,” Aroy says.

topics: activism, bay area, directors, diy, filmmakers, funding, independent film

Fear-Free Fundraising

Writing a kick-ass funding proposal

To land a foundation grant for your film, you need a well-edited trailer or work sample, chutzpah and, importantly, a kick-ass written proposal. Today’s topic is that proposal. Here are the basic ingredients.

Good ideas
You have to know what you are trying to create and what success looks like for that creation. With a film, your proposal is only as strong as the ideas, images and people your film contains. Do you have strong characters that give the audience somebody to identify with or whose story will move them? Are existential truths revealed through your film? Are there ideas, themes, lessons and morals to give your film shape and life? Have you thought through what the film is about, and is there a driving rationale for what it contains?

topics: bay area, directors, distributors, diy, documentary, features, festivals, funding, hbo, how-to, independent film

Platform

Ellen Schneider raises Active Voice

As executive director of American Documentary, Inc., the parent of PBS’ venerable P.O.V. series, Ellen Schneider oversaw what was and is the biggest platform for documentaries in America. In the late ’90s, she went on to spearhead the Television Race Initiative, which uses national TV broadcasts as the starting point for ongoing community dialogue about race relations. Schneider took the next step in her crusade to maximize the impact of social-issue documentaries in 2001 by founding the San Francisco-based strategic communications company Active Voice. The organization employs seven full-time staff and several consultants to devise campaigns for a client list that, at this writing, comprises eight active projects, four in the “legacy” phase and a dozen in some stage of development. We sat down with Schneider at Active Voice’s South of Market office to learn more.

topics: activism, curators, distributors, diy, documentary, funding, san francisco film society