Writ­ing grant appli­ca­tions is a lone­ly busi­ness, and receiv­ing rejec­tion let­ters from grant­i­ng foun­da­tions is depress­ing to say the least.  Don’t mis­take me.  Grant monies have been very help­ful to this project.  And since we need more grants to get this film fin­ished, we will con­tin­ue to apply for them and be over­joyed if/when we get them.  How­ev­er, sit­ting back and wiat­ing to hear if some unknown pan­el of judges will deem your project wor­thy of X,Y,Z’s sup­port, can leave a film­mak­er feel­ing pow­er­less and deject­ed.  What to do?

 

 

Sev­er­al months ago I decid­ed to take a part of fundrais­ing into my own hands with the help of  KICKSTARTER — an online crowd­sourc­ing plat­form that cre­ative types from first-time inven­tors to vet­er­an film­mak­ers like Char­lie Kauf­man have been using to raise funds for their projects.  The idea is that even with small dona­tions, you can raise a decent chunk of mon­ey if enough peo­ple get behind you.  As some­one who was raised to be inde­pen­dent and stand on my own, it feels uncom­fort­able to ask for help, espe­cial­ly mon­e­tary help.  But as soon as I start­ed telling peo­ple about my plans, Voila! a major shift occured in the ener­gy around my film.  I soon had offers of help from friends, col­leagues and com­plete strangers who got excit­ed about get­ting involved in a cre­ative project and help­ing it come to fruition.  Here are some of the amaz­ing vol­un­teers who’ve joined TEAM KUKAN recently.

 

There are many more peo­ple not pic­tured who have offered goods, ser­vices and morale sup­port.  Sud­den­ly fundrais­ing does­n’t feel like a lone­ly, depress­ing busi­ness any­more.  It’s still not easy.  It’s been chal­leng­ing, time-con­sum­ing, and stress­ful at times.  It’s also a lit­tle scary.  The way Kick­starter works is  that if you don’t raise ALL of your goal you get NOTHING.  So I expect the Kick­starter cam­paign (sched­uled to run from Sept 29-Nov 17) will run me more than a lit­tle ragged before it’s all through.  I also expect it will be an exhil­i­rat­ing ride that many new friends will join me on.  I hope you’ll be one of them.

 

 

Here is a sneak peek at a cou­ple of pre­mi­ums we are offer­ing to our Kick­starter pledgers. 

 

 

Want to join the effort?  Kick­starter is admin­is­tered through Ama­zon.  If you shop on Ama­zon, donat­ing is easy.  If you’ve nev­er shopped on Ama­zon, con­sid­er set­ting up an account to make the Kick­starter dona­tion process go smooth­ly.  Hate the idea of doing any­thing finan­cial on the inter­net?  Don’t wor­ry, we are giv­ing peo­ple the old-fash­ioned option of putting a check in snail mail too!

 

 

So what am I learn­ing on my lat­est fundrais­ing ven­ture?  To FACE MY FEAR, EMBRACE NEW FRIENDS, and HAVE FAITH that things will work out.  Have expe­ri­ence fundrais­ing on Kick­starter?  Please share by commenting.