NYTimes.com: As formerly reliable employers and patrons struggle to pay their own bills, artists have been forced to intensify their hunt for new fund-raising strategies. Even fictional artists have been affected. On the new NBC series “Smash,” the Broadway producer Eileen Rand (Anjelica Huston) tries to sell her beloved Degas just to finance a workshop. Which is why the prospect of financial crowd-sourcing on the Internet has been enthusiastically embraced by some as an important new model for the future of arts financing. The question is, how important?
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Kickstarter and Artspire as Models of Arts Financing
NYTimes.com: As formerly reliable employers and patrons struggle to pay their own bills, artists have been forced to intensify their hunt for new fund-raising strategies. Even fictional artists have been affected. On the new NBC series “Smash,” the Broadway producer Eileen Rand (Anjelica Huston) tries to sell her beloved Degas just to finance a workshop. Which is why the prospect of financial crowd-sourcing on the Internet has been enthusiastically embraced by some as an important new model for the future of arts financing. The question is, how important?
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CMU Showcase is on Indie gogo and it has raised $3000 of it's $7000 goal. That is pretty impressive, given that it is random people donating on the internet. Although I could see how these websites could be good for things like showcase because you can tell everyone you know an exact website that they can safely and easily give their money to. I wonder though are these sites sustainable for the long hall. I feel like a lot of the people that would donate would do it once because it was easy and then the appeal would wear off. This is defiantly a different way of funding art endeavors. It gives everyone equal access to making decisions about what art should be funded. And it allows everyone to have a fair chance to get funding for their art.
Indie gogo seems to be a much more useful site. Because there is not only art you can look in your area and see what could benefit you directly. I did a quick search for Pittsburgh and found that along with the all of the films, music, and theater you can fund, you can also fund a local coffee shop/community center on Liberty, along with all sorts of other things that could impact your life directly.
The appeal of websites like these, as the article highlights, is that they make the small donor matter. A lot of the recent Kickstarter projects I have been invited to donate to have been for musical groups, almost all with the promise that those who pledge would get the music earlier or even for free if the goal was reached. Often it feels like donating as little as $30 or $10 can't possibly make a difference, but websites like these show it can.
Another example of small-funding that made big news a few months ago was "The People's Revival of Godspell"-a campaign to produce the currently running revival of Godspell on Broadway entirely through small donations from those who cared. Depending on how much a benefactor gave, they could receive top billing in the program, seats to opening night, as well as other perks, and it allowed people who care about broadway to make a real impact on a show's ability to get funded and get open.
Kickstarter and Indie Gogo are great websites that allow for more projects and more groups to be funded. I agree with the other comments that show how this article brings out the common and lower donations and makes everything count. The possibilities and outreach to individuals who would not have donated before in addition to the individuals who will only donate a little can have major impacts.
Like Zoe did, just browsing the websites you can see thousands of interesting projects that individuals are planning or working on. Part of it is you have yo reach your goal to get the money in the first place, so you do have to work hard to get what people are donating.
Having the go-between sites just makes everyones life easier and more interesting. Its a great way to do more outreach to a wider variety of individuals. And also give them something in return.
Artist financial support systems such as kickstarter projects seem to be a really good source of getting funding early on. I wouldn't say that they simply divert other donors from contributing anyway, as Kickstarter itself can be a platform on which to discover the person being supported. When it comes to using kickstarter to raise funds for an already established organization, then it may be the case that it would have received donations anyway. No matter by what means, I hope that the personal support for the arts will grow.
As much as I think that these websites are great for fund raising, I do not think they reach out as far as the other comments suggest. How many people do you know that go on these sites asking themselves, "Who should I donate to today?" and poking around until they find something.
I would, however, agree that these internet fund raising sites allow artists to reach a broader audience and allow that audience to be small donors who matter (see Becca's comment). People can now connect through facebook and connect with a ton of people they know, who might pass on the site. So while I would agree that the target base is larger, I would disagree that random people are coming across the websites, looking at the work, and donating.
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