STANDING OUT IN A CROWDSTANDING OUT IN A CROWD

Gone are the days of thestarving artist.

The ubiquity of the Internetallows creative people — au-thors, musicians, artists, andfilm makers — as well as entre-preneurs, small-business own-ers and inventors to reach intothe wallets of friends, family, andeven total strangers in new waysthrough crowdfunding, a web-based vehicle for fundraising.

Crowdfunding, simply put,is a way to raise money for a pro-jected business venture throughsmall donations by hundreds oreven thousands of individualcontributors over the Internet.And those small chunks ofchange add up to billions.

According to a 2013Forbes article, the crowd-funding industry generated$2.7 billion in 2012 throughmore than a million fundingcampaigns around the world.The industry was expected tohit $5.1 billion by 2013.

Sites like Kickstarter, In-diegogo, and others provide aplatform for artists and entre-preneurs to tap the generos-ity of the global Internetvillage to fund projects a var-ied as films, books, websites,painting, and crafts, to com-mercial ventures seekingstart-up money to fund tech-nology solutions, manufactur-

ing processes, you name it.Since its founding in 2009,

Kickstarter has generated $1.2billion in funding from nearly 2million backers for more than19,000 projects. In 2013 alone,the site generated $480 millionfrom 3 million individuals in 214countries around the world.

Considered the second-largest funding site, In-diegogo.com, founded in2008, has funded fewer proj-ects than Kickstarter. Thecompany doesn’t publishoverall funding totals, but es-timates place the figure atabout a sixth of Kickstarter’s.

But Indiegogo remains apopular source because itsfunding model, unlike Kick-starter, allows project creatorsto keep funding even if theyfall short of their overall goal.(More on the all-or-nothingversus keep-it-all models later.)

And then there are dozensof other crowdfunding siteswith names like Crowdfunder,RocketHub, and Crowdrise,all with slightly different meth-ods and goals, but openingthe door to millions of projectsthat might otherwise languishin obscurity for lack of fund-ing. Some sites focus on artis-tic endeavors, others oncauses and charity, still otherson commercial ventures. Forinstance, a site like Quirky al-lows inventors, makers, andtinkerers to find cash to turntheir gadgets to life.

A search on the two mostpopular crowdfunding sites,Kickstarter and Indiegogo,reveals hundreds of projectsby Virginians ranging fromfilms, e-books, websites, tosmall businesses, like the Old

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Crowdfunding websitesextend the financial reachof artists and entrepreneurs

Photo by Doug Stroud

Dylan Nicholls raised moneyon Kickstarter to help fundhis film ‘The ShedrickThompson Case: The LastLynching in Virginia.’ Sinceits founding in 2009, Kick-starter has generated $1.2billion in funding.

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Virginia Lure Co. in Roanoke. Locally, two young

Fauquier film makers and aFront Royal painter turned tocrowdfunding to raise thecash they needed to completetheir projects.

Two films and 31 ballparks

Fauquier college studentsBrendan Rijke, 21, and DylanNicholls, 18, recently turnedto Kickstarter to raise fundsfor film projects. Both youngmen are college students,Rijke a senior at the Univer-sity of Virginia and Nicholls arising sophomore at JamesMadison University.

Rijke’s film “Fifth Street”was shot on location in War-renton and tells the tale ofAdele, who always wanted tobecome a famous writer.“’Fifth Street’ illustrates ayoung woman’s journey to-ward self-discovery. The shortfilm examines the ways wemake meaning from past ex-periences,” according to Rijke.

The film project began inNovember 2013 when hisfriend Shane Dutta contactedhim about making a short nar-rative film in the spring. “Heknew that I had a backgroundin cinematography and he inmusic and writing, so we de-cided to partner with NikiAfsar, another UVA student, tocollaborate on drafting thefilm’s screenplay,” Rijke said.

They spent three monthswriting the script and anotherfive months on production,including casting and locationscouting, before finally shoot-ing the short in Warrentonlast May. “We collaboratedwith Levi Magyar, a localFauquier filmmaker, for post-production, which lasted atotal of two months,” he said.

He and his partnersneeded to raise money to payfor film equipment rental,post-production tasks, prepar-

ing the film for exhibitions,and film festival submissionfees. They considered In-diegogo, but liked the “all-or-nothing” aspect ofKickstarter, which they be-lieved added more urgencyto the fundraising effort.

Rijke launched the Kick-starter campaign last springand went on to beat his goalof $2,000 by 228 percent, gen-erating $4,550 by the Aprildeadline. The surplus pro-vided additional flexibility inequipment rental and thenumber of film festival sub-missions they could afford.

“The size and degree ofsupport from the Fauquiercommunity, friends, and fam-ily is something that we neverexpected and are wholeheart-edly grateful for,” Rijke said.

Only a week into his ownKickstarter campaign, DylanNicholls’ project passed the

halfway mark with $1,090pledged by 22 supporters to-ward the $2,000 goal. His film,“The Shedrick ThompsonCase: The Last Lynching inVirginia,” chronicles a mysteri-ous unsolved murder of afarmhand in northernFauquier County in the 1930s.

The film tells the tale ofthe brutal beating and rape ofHenry and Mamie Baxley bytheir tenant Shedrick Thomp-son. After the attack, an out-raged community formed asearch party to find Thomp-son, but it was two monthslater that his body was foundhanging from a wild appletree. His death was ruled asuicide at the time.

Working with Delaplanefilm maker Tom Davenport,who in the 1990s interviewedthe then-surviving witnessesof the event, Nicholls beganpiecing together the various

interviews along with newones by other surviving wit-nesses and their descendents.

The film examines sev-eral unanswered questionsabout the attack and subse-quent hanging. “Why would ablack man commit such acrime in 1930s Virginia?” theKickstarter synopsis asks.“Though in many instancesthe black and white commu-nities interacted amicably,racial tensions were enoughto make this a virtual act ofsuicide on Shedrick’s part.”

Also, the film seeks an-swer on who caught the man,and why his death was con-sidered a suicide.

Nicholls also initially con-sidered Indiegogo, but hehad been hearing “a lot ofbuzz” about Kickstarteramong his college friends atJMU. In addition, he heardnews stories talking about

PHOTO BY DOUG STROUD

Dylan Nicholls’ film, “The Shedrick Thompson Case: The Last Lynching in Virginia,”chronicles a mysterious unsolved murder of a farmhand in northern FauquierCounty in the 1930s. The film tells the tale of the brutal beating and rape of Henryand Mamie Baxley by their tenant Shedrick Thompson.

film projects netting millionsfor their producers.

“Some big film makershave stopped going to pro-duction companies andstarted to fund independentlyon Kickstarter,” Nichollssaid. “It just felt like Kick-starter was getting a lot ofpublicity and seemed like theplace to start.”

Painter Kelly Walker inFront Royal also determinedthat Kickstarter was the placeto launch her unusual project“Painted Diamonds—30 BallParks in 30 Weeks.” Her cam-paign, which ended in May2013, beat its fundraising goalof $4,800 by 119 percent, rais-ing $5,712 from 82 supporters.

Her ambitious project in-volved creating a painting ofevery major league ballpark,30 in total, between April andOctober 2013, the 30 weeksbefore the World Series. Sheneeded money to pay for can-vas, frames, paint, and other

items needed to actually pro-duce the paintings.

The project ended with anexhibition of the entire seriesat the Blue Ridge Arts Councilin Front Royal during WorldSeries week , Oct. 23-31, 2013.The opening featured all-Amer-ican ballpark fare of hot dogs,peanuts, and Cracker Jack.

“I was actually looking fora project that might be goodfor doing on Kickstarter,” shesaid. “I like painting things inseries from time to time. I triedto come up with something Icould do that would have awide enough appeal that sup-porters would want to fund it.”

Keys to successOne the biggest challenges

faced by everyone seekingfunding on crowdfunding sitescomes down to simply spread-ing the word. With so manyprojects on the site, artists findit difficult to stand out in thecrowd. Without constant pro-

motion, their projects fall fur-ther down the list and becomeburied by other more popularendeavors.

Also, the all-or-nothingfunding model for Kickstarterplaces tremendous pressureon artists like Walker whohad to start painting her 30ballparks well ahead of thefundraising deadline just tomake sure she finished all thepaintings in time for the Octo-ber opening.

“If you’re a full-time artistand you’re throwing yourselfout there for a project andthen wind up with notenough people to fund a proj-ect, you don’t look like a verysuccessful artist,” Walkersaid. “There was a lot of pres-sure to get there.

“I needed to stay ahead ofit in order to get the 30 [paint-ings finished] in 30 weeks. Ithink I had already paintedthree or four before [thefundraising campaign] actu-

ally closed,” she said.And the biggest fear for

many comes from seeing theirproject lose momentum andfizzle out before the relativelyshort fundraising window(often 30 to 60 days) closes.

“I do worry about it losingmomentum, but I keep hittingit every day and sending outnew emails,” Nicholls said ofhis campaign. He regularlyasks his 500-plus friends onFacebook to like and sharehis Kickstarter page.

Viral marketing — goodold word of mouth — re-mains the best way to raisethe profile of a crowdfundingproject. If every one ofNicholls’ 500 Facebookfriends shared the project’swebsite link, the potentialreach would extend to thou-sands of potential donors.

Since Rijke’s project hadonly 29 days to reach the$2,000 fundraising goal, histeam targeted its efforts on

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spreading the word via thefilm’s official Facebook pageand in a number of newspa-per publications, includingthe Fauquier Times andother local media outlets.

“While we laid the founda-tion for the campaign, wegained momentum throughword of mouth and the supportof people sharing the Kick-starter page on their respectivesocial media pages,” Rijke said.“We tried to do as much re-search and preparation beforewe launched the campaign inorder to make the funding pe-riod as effective as possible.”

Walker said organizationis critical to crowd sourcingsuccess. “You need to be or-ganized in what you’re doing,especially for whatever timeperiod you have it up there,”she said. “You have to be or-ganized enough that you canpromote, promote, promoteduring that time period.”

In her case, Walker made

regular posts on her blog atwww.lifeofadailypainter.com.She’s been blogging for sev-eral years and has quite a fol-lowing, which helped spreadthe word when she launchedthe ballpark project. Of the 82

people who contributed tothe project, Walkers said sheknew about half personally;the rest she thinks camethrough her blog.

“The cool thing for me asan artist is a couple of people

who funded me through theKickstarter project havebought other paintings sincethen,” she said. “Peoplestarted following the blogfrom Kickstarter. If they seesomething they like, theysend me a message, and thenI sell a painting.”

Rijke said the single great-est factor that contributed to the“Fifth Street” campaign's suc-cess turned out to be supportfrom the local Fauquier com-munity. “I have lived in Warren-ton for most of my life andgrowing up in the town was achief inspiration for the film,” hesaid. “To then receive such gen-erosity and support from myhometown gave the cast andcrew the affirmation we neededto complete ‘Fifth Street.’”

Follow theinstructions

Both Rijke and Walker ad-vise potential crowdsourcingpeople to pay attention to the

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PHOTO BY ALISA BOOZE TROETSCHEL

‘The cool thing for me as an artist is a couple of peoplewho funded me through the Kickstarter project havebought other paintings since then,’ Front Royal-basedartist Kelly Walker said.

advice offered by the Kick-starter website, as well as byothers who’ve successfullyraised funds for their proj-ects. A simple Google searchuncovers tons of useful com-mentary on how to prepareand promote a project. Arti-cles and blog posts explainthe advantages and disadvan-tages of various crowdsourc-ing sites, such as Kickstarter,Indiegogo, and Crowdfunder.

An important first step,though, involves understandingthe nuances of each fundraisingmethod to determine whichone best suits your project.

“Before launching yourcampaign, I would stressthe importance of developingand publishing professionalcontent on your crowdsourc-ing site,” Rijke said. “Youhave to build a level of trustand, of course, interest frompotential backers.”

He said the former can beachieved from having a high

degree of transparency andclear communication on yoursite. “Also, look to other suc-cessful online fundraising cam-paigns that have funded similarprojects. Do your homework,and spend time learning howto apply their strategies.”

Walker believes the big keyto reaching a fundraising goalis “read and believe” the infor-mation presented on the crowdsourcing site. “If somebodygives you advice about whatworks, believe it,” she said.

“Kickstarter is not puttingstuff on the site for the hell ofit,” Walker said. “They maymake money when you dowell, so they want your proj-ect to be funded.”

Editor’s Note: DylanNicholls’ project, “The ShedrickThompson Case: Virginia’s LastLynching,” can be found at:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/820575926/the-shedrick-thompson-case-virginias-last-lynching?ref=nav_search .

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Kickstarter, Indiegogo,Crowdfunder, or any of thenearly two dozen fundingsites available — thechoice of which to use de-pends on the type of proj-ect you’re seeking to fund.

There are three primaryfunding models among thetwo dozen or more fundingsites for artistic or invest-ment projects: all or noth-ing; keep it all; and bounty.

All or nothing meansthat when the fundraisingperiod ends, the projectgets funded only if themonetary goal is reached.While somewhat risky, theadvantage of all-or-nothingis the sense of urgency itgives to your project. Thedisadvantage? Fall a fewdollars short, and you don’tget the money.

Keep it all allows the cre-ator to keep the collectedfunds regardless of whetherthe funding goal is met.Whether or not you haveenough funds to complete(or even begin) your project,it’s up to you whether you re-fund money to your donors.

The bounty model pro-vides funds for someonewho successfully provides arequested service or a solu-tion to a particular problem.

Kickstarter takes 5 per-cent of the total raised andanother 3 percent to 5 per-cent to process paymentsthrough Amazon Payments.Indiegogo takes 4 percentof the total raised if thefunding goal is met, 9 per-cent if the goal is not met,and charges a 2.9 percentpayment processing fee.

Which model is right for your project?