Financing / Crowdfunding : Fundraising Techniques by Kelly La Rosa

I think it depends on how much money you need to raise. If it is only a small amount, live hosting events or family and friends donating will do the trick but if it is a much larger amount, I think that the online source maybe your best bet. I hear that you have to have a lot of ducks in a row before you can use Kickstarter and Indiegogo which can force you to be more organized and focused on your production. Some may not feel comfortable marketing themselves to strangers asking to invest money in their film project but I think that is a big hurdle we need to overcome as indie filmmakers is putting ourselves out there and self market. I think that is where a lot of films languish is we forget to put money aside or include in our budget about marketing. I know that is especially true in Canada where we try to scrap the barrel just to get our films made never mind marketed. But if we did maybe more of our indie films would be shown in theatres and not collect dust. Just a thought. :)

One thing that didn't work: ChipIn. I went with ChipIn because it dumps money right into my PayPal account. However, since there is nothing in it for the donors using ChipIn people tend to not open their wallets. Will Indiegogo direct the proceeds to your PayPal? I have a business PayPal account and it would be cool to use that instead of having to deal starting up a bank account specifically for the purpose like you have to do with Kickstarter.

Indiegogo is better. you recieve all of the funds youve raised (minus their fees) whether or not you reached your goal. Kickstarter does not send you the funds unless you reach the goal..and its hard enough to get people to give you once, let alone try to tell them to do it twice bc you didnt get it the first tme. ALSO ... Ive used Indiegogo twice and had better than moderate success. But I know two people that used Kickstarter that never got their funds. I still gave them a check, but thats just me...Go with Indiegogo if you have a sizeable goal and if you feel you might have trouble raising it. On my indiegogo..we had $1149 pledged and i had $1009 distributed to me since indiegogo took their share. AND im happy with it

MICHELLE....Indiegogo will distribute the money where you tell it to and when you tell it to. You have options there.

Personally I really enjoy indiegogo. Part of it is that indiegogo offers flexible funding. A fee of 9% is taken when your campaign doesn't reach it's mark and only 4% when it does. Kickstarter is all or nothing. If you don't reach your goal, you receive zero. In any case, it is amazing that there are sites like this that exist for Indie film makers. I am currently involved in a campaign on indiegogo for a short film project. Feel free to follow us on our way to fundraising glory at www.indiegogo.com/btl Best of luck to all you Indie film markers and actors. Also, thank you to stage32 for providing a great site to discuss and find fellow film people.

This is nice, yeah, I can plug in my PayPal account. I will be setting up an account with a local Credit Union that will be "strictly for Ms. Geek Media stuff" so I'll be able to offer Flexible Funding once the account is up.

Oh this is so informative..I have not used either Indiegogo or Kickstarter, I just saved up my own money for my first short..This has definately helped in my decision for fundraising for my next project! :)

IndieGoGo, hands down. Not only do they offer numerous methods of fundraising, but they pay when they say they're going to pay. Very flexible, very impressive. My business partner ran a Kickstarter and didn't receive his money until almost 5 weeks after the campaign was over. I ran one on IndieGoGo and got all the money we were looking for, and received the funds the Friday after the campaign ended! Plus, we got featured on their main page and Facebook by following a few "cheating" rules. Very awesome.

So many great responses. Dina how much would you consider to be a large amount of money? 5K? 10K?

Hey Kelly..I guess it would depend on your financial situation..If you can get some of your own money together yourself and partially fund it or you are not able to afford to put any money of your own then outside funding will be your only alternative. I was lucky I was able to financially get 95 percent of my own funding myself and a friend donated the last 5 percent. But not everyone is that fortunate. My budget for that one was $5 K. Now my next project will double that and I am going to have to source out outside funding, but I will put some of my own money into it as well. So I guess in a round about way, whether its 5K or 100K if you don't have the money it would be a large amount either way. Good luck!

I am starting a Kickstarter next week because I believe Jean, that Kickstarter is better for larger projects. We are starting with a goal of $100,000 and 30 days. We are a team of three seeking to fund a internationally collaborative feature film in a couple of stages. We have some funding but we have a million dollar budget and a 3d project. Cody, Kickstarter takes 5% if you get fully funded.

Thanks Yoktan... I took a look a look at that perk or incentive and I love it. I am going to talk to my team and pitch it as a great incentive. How do we set up the voting?