March 3, 2010

FNB Innovator: Danae Ringelmann

This week FilmNewsBriefs had the opportunity to speak with Danae Ringelmann Founder, Chief of Finance and Customer Development at IndieGoGo. We discuss IndieGoGo’s innovative fundraising tools, successful projects as well as hints on finding emerging filmmakers and interesting projects to help finance.

FilmNewsBriefs: Please briefly explain IndieGoGo.
Danae Ringelmann: IndieGoGo provides the tools and process for funding ideas in the sub $100,000 market. Projects (e.g. films) use IndieGoGo to showcase their project, engage fans, and offer perks as a way to raise money.  Every one of our 3,000-plus projects is equipped with a landing page, social media tools, widgets, and statistics to manage a fan-driven fundraising campaign.

FNB: What are the key factors/inspirations that made you decide to launch this concept?
DR: My co-founders and I came together back in 2006 after all experiencing the pain of fundraising directly. Slava [Rubin] had started an annual charity event to raise awareness and funds for Myeloma — a rare form of cancer — a few years prior. Eric [Schell] was on the board of a self-financed Theater Group in Chicago, and I had just co-produced a reading of an off-Broadway Arthur Miller play while also helping filmmakers prepare investor pitches when I worked in entertainment finance. We launched IndieGoGo in 2008 with the goal of democratizing fundraising, making it more efficient, and taking advantage of all the latest trends on the internet.

FNB:Why start with a focus on filmmaking?
DR: Do you know a filmmaker who’s maxed out their credit card, sold their car or re-mortgaged their house to get their film made? I do. In fact, I know too many. If only their wallets matched their passion & determination, IndieGoGo wouldn’t need to exist. Film is tough because the costs are front-loaded and the revenues are back-ended. So we’ve given filmmakers the tools and a process to start raising capital for their film before its even made (e.g. by pre-selling their DVD, tickets to the premiere or simple credits in the film). For example, Project Arbiter — a beautifully shot sci-fi espionage story — is selling visits to the set, printed photos, DVDs and a special screen credit thanks to raise money.

In providing this fundraising infrastructure, we’re also helping projects build audience interest that they can carry into investor meetings, the festival circuit, and distribution talks. The director of Louder Than Love — a documentary film about the Grande Ballroom, an infamous rock venue in Detroit — already has a lot of investor interest, but he’s using a fundraising campaign on IndieGoGo to show to his potential investors that he has an audience.

With a foothold in the film space we are excited to be expanding our tool set to other great projects like music, games, ventures, art, causes, and books as well.

FNB: What’s some key advice for filmmakers when looking for funders?
DR: First make a great pitch clip like “Getting Stuck Like Chuck.” Second, offer unique and creative perks at varying price points with financial, emotional and scarcity incentives like “All That Glitters.” Thirdly, be specific and transparent with your funding goal and use of funds like “Unplaned Over Egypt.” Fourthly, provide fun and frequent updates through fundraising, production and distribution like “Swallow” and, finally, be proactive with your influencer outreach like “Superhero 9 to 5.”

A great example is the project Cerise on IndieGoGo. The filmmaker made a fun and personality-filled pitch clip letting his fans know who he and his team are, why they’re making the film, and what fans will get for funding “Cerise.” He’s been selling personalized poems, trips to diners, and executive producer credits. All contributions will go to paying for the sound recordist and food for the cast. Every time he gets a contribution he shares a poem with his funders and tweets industriously.

FNB: What kind of people donate to films?
DR: From friends, fans, and followers, to activists passionate about raising awareness of a cause the film addresses, to film lovers who simply enjoy seeing good work made or receiving one-of-a-kind perks, funders and their reasons for funding span a broad range.

With And Then Came Lola — a lesbian romantic comedy — shared their IndieGoGo campaign in a forum on AfterEllen.com — a popular lesbian website. The next morning, they had a few thousand dollars in contributions all from forum readers. These people funded because they just wanted to see more lesbian content made. However, many of Tapestries of Hope‘s funders made their contribution to help stop the rape crisis in Africa that the documentary brings to light, while many of the funders of Love & Taxes simply love the Sundance veterans making the project and want them to keep producing good stuff. What IndieGoGo has shown is that there are many reasons, besides just “return on investment” for contributing to a film. Getting perks, following the project story, and staying engaged makes it a community success in which people want to participate.

FNB: Do you know how many people have a personal relationship with the project or know the filmmakers?
DR: It really depends on the project. If the project’s team is not yet active in social media, probably most of their funders will have some kind of personal relationship. A great example is Laundry — a sweet little love story set in the wine country of Northern California and a laundromat. The filmmaker raised most of her funds from her extended community. However, if the project has a blog or is active on Facebook and Twitter, its funders are anyone who’s been following their updates or who discovers them through their outreach and online presences. A great example is the Prosecution of George W. Bush. Nearly 100 percent of its contributions to-date are from politically passionate individuals who discovered the project by seeing its press release and twitter activity.

Audience-building and engagement is a key component of crowdfunding. Filmmakers who do a good job of identifying their audiences, reaching out through influencers (e.g. bloggers/organizations) and entertaining and updating their fans do the best in finding new fans and mobilizing them into funders.

FNB: If you’re a studio or a producer looking for emerging filmmakers, how can you best use indiegogo?
DR: There are over 3,000 projects on IndieGoGo. Any studio looking for the next big animator, sci-fi director, or doc cinematographer can go on IndieGoGo right now and search for the type of talent or projects they’re looking for, using tags and filters. We’re already working with some media organizations who are using IndieGoGo to source project and talent that fit their criteria. If a studio, TV network, web channel or any organization is interested in doing the same (i.e. having IndieGoGo do the curation based on data and feedback), I can be reached at Danae@indiegogo.com.

FNB: What’s the average budget of your projects?
DR: The projects’ budget range from hundreds to millions. The key is that micro-fundraising is not a replacement funding source, but rather a complementary channel. Many projects like “I Live at the House with a Blue Door” are carving out a percentage of their total budget to raise via fans purely as a marketing tactic. By offering fans a way into the filmmaking process via perks and project updates, fans quickly move from passive viewers to active guerilla marketers. We see “I just funded Project XYZ on IndieGoGo. Join me and fund it too” tweets all the time now. Imagine what people are saying at the water cooler. I recently wrote a piece entitled: The 5 Benefits of Crowdfunding: Money, Marketing, Market Traction, Monetization Outside the Copyright and Mojo. I encourage everyone to read it as I go into the benefits in greater detail. What’s the stats with genres, size, etc.. (Docs vs. scripted, short vs. feature, etc…)

Documentary is a strong category, as are shorts, web series and narrative. We have a strong representation from all kinds of films and video projects. Again, fundraising success is more correlated with size of audience and level of engagement than genre, per se.

FNB: How do you feel micro-fundraising is changing the film landscape?
DR: We use to say “Content is King.” While content will always be the catalyst, now we say “Audience is King.” Micro-fundraising is not just getting projects start-up capital or finishing funds. It’s a step towards validating a project’s market or, rather, showing it has an audience growing. I think the number one reason movies get a rap as being “bad investments” is because historically there’s been no good tool or process to test if there’s a a genuine audience for a film before it’s made. This makes an investment in a movie pretty much a bet. When an apartment building goes up, the developer doesn’t bet on whether people move in or not. They pre-sell units in the building to show that people actually want to live there. If not enough units are sold, they don’t build the building due to lack of market demand. It’s that simple. With tools like IndieGoGo enabling micro-fundraising, filmmakers with projects can do the same. Filmmakers with budgets of all sizes can use IndieGoGo to improve their risk/return profile via micro-fundraising.

FNB: How’d you coin the phrase DIWO (Do-It-With-Others)?
DR: Coincidentally, we coined the term DIWO with others! Before IndieGoGo even launched, we shared the concept with friends and filmmakers constantly. We kept on repeating it from conversation to conversation until it just stuck. Now it is just as much a phrase as it is an IndieGoGo philosophy.

FNB: There’s a few other competitors on the market, why should people use Indiegogo?
DR: There are lots of good funding tools out there, but IndieGoGo was created to service a unique purpose — make it easier to fund people driven projects. IndieGoGo has many unique points:

IndieGoGo’s global in 94 countries! Anyone in the world can post a project and raise money across borders. IndieGoGo is also the first and only online fundraising platform to integrate fiscal sponsorship. That means filmmakers can offer both perks AND tax deductions to their contributors through our partnership with the SF Film Society. We also integrate “Demand It” functionality into every project’s page. Anyone can request any project on IndieGoGo come to their town, similar to how fans requested “Paranormal Activity.” Projects don’t just engage fans, they build demand.

All projects get special access to their own performance metrics. Every project can see their views, referrals, dollars and requests for events in once simple dashboard. They can see which “fans” are driving traffic and dollars to their project. This type of data is great if you want to reward/thank people and organizations for helping with outreach and marketing. Finally, on IndieGoGo, there are no costraints around meeting goals, so projects keep all the funds they raise.

FNB: Are there any new features on the horizon?
DR: We have some really exciting things cooking, including partnerships and new product offerings. Would love to say more, just can’t at the moment! People will get the latest by following our blog: The DIWO Download or us on Twitter

FNB: What’s your goal with expanding Indiegogo to other industries?
DR: We called ourselves IndieGoGo (not FilmGoGo) for a reason. In fact, writers, designers, musicians, entrepreneurs and causes have been asking us to go beyond film since the beginning. So it’s exciting that we recently opened up. While ideas tend to belong to a specific vertical, fans and funders don’t necessarily. There’s no reason why someone who funded a film after stumbling upon it wouldn’t also contribute to a book, iPhone app or non-profit. The expansion is already enhancing, growing and strengthening the IndieGoGo community!

FNB: Are there any milestones you’d like to share?
DR: The last few months have been great for projects raising money. We are very excited about our recent expansion beyond film — music, books, causes, entrepreneurship, and more. We also are excited about our upcoming announcements around SXSW. Our team has been working hard to prepare the world for some cool new functionality and services. We’ll be throwing a party at SXSW to celebrate!

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