If you have been reading my blog recently, you will know I have been looking for contributors to help support a series of projects here in Indonesia. Well, I am now very close to my target and so on Thursday will be heading to Makassar to start shooting. I still need to sort out a few details but essentially the entire project will be going ahead.
The success of this crowd-funding project is entirely due to the people that have very generously donated money or helped share what I am doing on their own social networks. To the following people, I am very much in your debt! Thank you for your support, your time and efforts, and your trust in me to tell these stories successfully…
Thanks to the following people for helping to spread the word about what I am trying to do:
And thanks to the following people for their amazing generosity – without you all, these shoots would not be going ahead:
Over the last few days I have taken quite a 'clinical' look at why this particular crowd-funding project has worked and so, for visitors who are considering gathering support for projects in a similar manner, I have tried to break down the main reasons why I believe I have been successful:
I suspect that if I had pitched a grand idea, with a huge budget and a less definite goal, I would never have reached my funding target. In 'clinical' terms, crowd-funding needs an emotional hook and contributors must feel that their support, no matter how small, is going to make a real difference to the overall success of the project.
Would I try this again? I am already considering a much larger project for later this year which I will try and fund through a site such as KickStarter or IndieGoGo. I have learned some valuable lessons from this crowd-funding project which I can apply to future funding campaigns on platforms that will give me a great deal of exposure. I firmly believe that crowd-funding is a viable way of funding photography projects, although I now need to step away from my own fabulous and generous network of family, friends and contacts, and into the pulic domain. That will be the true test of whether my ideas and stories are deserved of funding.
And I am off… As the shoot progresses I will be emailing updates to my contributors directly, and will also be posting images on my FB page, tweeting away, uploading mobile images to my posterous site and writing up a few blog posts here – all dependent on internet access of course! My aim is to share the experience of shoots like these with everyone that has made them possible. Thank you once again!
