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Community Fundraising in Media Arts

Published on June 23, 2009

By Phil Lane

Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s new chief of staff, told a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” Funny, for media arts organizations around the country like ours, this is a sentiment that we want to believe in but if you are picking-up a newspaper each day, at least one of the ones that are left, prospects seem grim. Government is tapped. Foundations, even the ones that aren’t connected to the Bernie Madoff scandal, are hurting and, of course, individual donors who might typically have some capacity to help, are still trying to navigate the year’s wreckage. As fundraisers for social-issue media in times like these, how do we keep our organizations healthy?

The crowd at this year’s Media That Matters Film Festival where Peer2Peer was announced

This June, Arts Engine peers — myself included, a MediaRights.org member and mediamaker before coming on-board at Arts Engine — have been contacting each other with great vigor to solicit support for Arts Engine. This Peer2Peer Campaign launched earlier this month at the ninth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Premiere and Awards Ceremony. Two of Arts Engine’s Peer2Peer advocates, filmmakers Ben Herson and Andrew Walton, announced the rollout and publicly asked for their peer’s support at the events.

The opportunity-in-crisis that Rahm Emanuel alludes to, comes from people banding together around a common cause. Arts Engine is fortunate to have over 20,000 members nationally through its various programs. If this diverse community of mediamakers, educators and activists were able to give $10 or $20, we would be able to make a strong statement to all stakeholders of social-issue media. The Peer2Peer Fundraising Campaign began with momentum as Arts Engine was given a challenge match grant of $10,000 from Guy Lancaster and his family at Still Point Fund, one of Arts Engine strongest supporters over the years. So Peer2Peer quickly had an objective: to raise $10,000 by matching $10,000. Not bad.

Ben Herson announcing the Peer2Peer Campaign

Prior to my work at Arts Engine, I spent many years working in a variety of roles with San Francisco media arts organizations such as the Arab Film Festival, Canyon Cinema, Center for Asian American Media, Frameline, Madcat Film Festival, NAMAC, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, San Francisco Cinematheque, and Film Arts Foundation. This last organization (“FAF” as some of us affectionately used to call it) ran a highly successful Member2Member Campaign in 2004. I asked former Development Director Lisa Foster about her experience and she told me, “I am so happy that you are contacting me about this (peer fundraising). This particular fundraising campaign was one of my favorite projects while I was head of Development at Film Arts.”

Analogous to today’s Facebook fundraising causes, FAF members made appeals to their fellow members to step-up support. FAF was under stress and they needed help. A group of FAF champions contacted fellow members through 500 personalized letters, 2,200 form letters and 1,200 e-mails. One of these champions, Jack Walsh, Co-Director of NAMAC, told me this month that,

“The FAF campaign was successful for many reasons. One, there was an engaged Advisory Board of fifteen or so members, long time FAF members and former Board Presidents who were committed to writing the letter, signing personal notes to individuals we knew and making follow-up phone calls to members. Second, FAF did not have a standing annual campaign, which meant that people were not overly asked for contributions. Finally, and this was learned through the follow-up phone calls, there was a loyal sector of members who no longer used the organization’s services, but felt the organization helped them launch their careers. Many moved into positions with decent salaries and were happy to provide a donation.”

Lisa added, “There is no way an appeal coming from staff or board could have made the same impact. The multiple elements—personalized letters, generic letters, e-mails, phone calls and a web page—helped ensure a high level of participation.”

As Andrew Walton, Director of Arctic Son, said during his speech at this June’s Media That Matters Film Festival Awards Ceremony, “It’s not so much what you give that is important, it’s that you give. We are striving for 100% participation.” Thus far donations have come in from Media That Matters alumni, former staff members, professors, DocuClub screeners, people who have worked on production for Big Mouth Films in the past and, of course, MediaRights.org members from all around the country. While Rahm Emanuel seeks opportunity in crisis, mediamakers, educators and activists, through the Peer2Peer campaign, are also rising to the occasion by donating and saying, “Yes we can.”

This article is available for noncommercial use under a Creative Commons license. It was originally published on MediaRights.org, a project of Arts Engine, Inc. This notice must accompany the article at all times.

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