Breakout sessions at Getting Real ’24. Image credit: Urbanite LA
Fundraising for films is notoriously time-consuming and opaque. It can often seem like the dull but necessary part of making a film, a chore that some filmmakers worry about only after their film is already shot, when they realize they have to pay for finishing or recover costs. Others need start-up money to even get started. With sales growing more and more tenuous and grants being ultra-competitive, we look to learn from documentarians who recently funded their projects through donations and other more grassroots means.
Documentary spoke with five projects in IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program for advice they would give to filmmakers in similar positions at the beginning of their fundraising journey. Many of these films were able to lean on the community they grew out of and were able to find support from individuals and organizations related to their topic. Most of the projects also cite a consistent approach as the most meaningful way to garner support for a project. Here are five ways they successfully did so:
1. Auction Off Donations and Production Items
Fundraising for The Donn of Tiki was always tied to the theme of the film. The team started by crowdfunding via a Kickstarter campaign, which they incentivized through gifting physical rewards like Tiki mugs and pins. Then, through IDA’s Fiscal Sponsorship Program, the team was able to receive individual donations as well from folks within the Tiki community who were interested in being affiliated with the project.
They also held an auction to benefit from existing interest in Tiki, which raised around US$25,000. “We had two large fundraisers where guests could purchase tickets to come. The event included some kind of food and entertainment. We received a number of in-kind donations from artists. We had paintings, gift certificates, memorabilia, and collectibles like old matchbooks and napkins. There were also a couple of other things that were part of the film, like props, that we auctioned off as well,” director Max Well explained. One of the film’s props was a puppet designed by Kevin Kidney, an artist well-known in the Tiki community, for which they received a decent sum through the auction. This commission and subsequent sale also demonstrated the filmmakers’ strong knowledge of the people surrounding their project. The team identified their target audience by speaking with a few key players within the Tiki community early on, and started the engagement process well before production began.
2. Reach Out Through Local Organization Partners
The team behind Sign My Way to Freedom, which is still actively fundraising, found great success partnering with local organizations to reach out to their respective membership bases on behalf of the project. Being featured in a membership newsletter is a helpful move, but the team didn’t just stop with their fundraising efforts here. Director Bryan Gibel found that offering something to these organizations in return, to make the relationship mutually beneficial, lent the project the most engagement from these networks. Their initial outreach email included 90-second to four-minute trailers. Next, the team set up in-person screenings, partnering with these organizations to show a 20-minute work sample that would generate interest from potential donors within the membership communities.
These small events often did bring in individual donors and others who would promote the project to their large social media networks. Gibel points to having a tangible asset, their work sample, ready to present for partnership with these organizations as the main factor of their fundraising success. Now, the team is continuing to screen the work sample to garner further support as they move into their post-production phase.
3. Start a Newsletter For Your Film
Apart from being included in existing newsletters, you can also start your own! A Better Way: James Lawson, Architect of Nonviolence took on this initiative and curated a community for itself that grew very organically out of the film’s subject matter. The film chronicles the story of the Nonviolence Movement of America through the perspective of Reverend James Lawson, a leading theoretician of the movement. Starting the newsletter was a way around the limitations the size of their team presented: “We thought about doing a social fundraising campaign. But then we looked at the capacity of our team and we thought, ‘Well, let’s see how far we can get with just outreach through our own emails.’ And then we started the newsletter, which has worked out pretty well for us,” Hayes pointed out.
Through each stage of the film, the newsletter helped the team consistently engage with existing and potential donors, while also allowing the surrounding community to contribute directly to the project. “When we reached our first rough cut, we had a screening where we invited a few of our partners to have a first look,” Hayes said.
Though the email newsletter had a significant impact on increasing support for the project, many members of the film’s community also had a minimal online presence. “In addition to doing an E-newsletter we made some letters that could be sent through the snail mail. So our approach was really tailored to the communities that we were working with,” Hayes said. Allowing those supporting the film to feel closely included and letting them join in on the ups and downs was instrumental in forging long-term donor relationships for A Better Way, as well as finding encouragement in the surrounding community.
4. Build on Existing Connections
When a film’s topic is politically charged, it can sometimes be difficult to gather support even from funders whose ideals seem aligned with your project’s. Such was the case with Everything You Have is Yours. For first-time feature filmmakers director Tatyana Tenenbaum and producer Brighid Greene, this process was even harder to navigate without much anchoring in the film industry. But a relationship that wasn’t intended to bring financial support proved fundamental to the project’s funding success.
One day, the main participant of their film fortuitously ran into a staffer of a human rights organization, who recognized the participant after consulting with a film fund on the team’s unsuccessful grant application. The staff member expressed her interest and admiration for the film. She became an adviser to the filmmakers, giving them feedback on their rough cut. Eventually, she funded the film through her own newly formed media company. The network only multiplied from there as this funder put them in touch with other filmmakers with similar values.
Here is the advice Tenenbaum had for filmmakers who might be facing similar funding challenges: “When you are working with politically charged subject matter and seeking to do it in a way that is non didactic, it’s hard for funders to take a risk on that. It’s much easier for folks who have shared values, vested interests, and shared community to get on board. So we had to find and lean on those relationships.”
For Committed director and producer Kenneth Paul Rosenberg and producer Peter Miller, the key to their fundraising process was to stay in touch with donors who funded their previous project, Bedlam (2019). Since both films focus on topics involving mental illness, carrying over contacts from their last project was hugely helpful in funding Committed without major broadcasters on board, since multiple-year-long projects aren’t conducive to broadcast timelines.
5. Seek Topic-Based Funding
Finding additional stakeholders invested in the subject covered by Committed was also crucial to its journey. The filmmakers reached out to family foundations and other philanthropic organizations interested in the film’s cause. "Peter and I were so pleased to find that mental health foundations were thrilled to have their dollars result in the kind of political, medical, and social impact that we achieved with our last film, Bedlam," Rosenberg said.
The challenge, Miller noted, was explaining the production timeline and process to those unfamiliar with the industry. Making production language accessible is sometimes critical to outreach and securing funding beyond the immediate film circle, especially if you take a topic-based approach like Committed did.
Arushi Khare is a writer from Los Angeles and the Summer 2024 publications intern at IDA.