For those of you who may not know, kickstarter.com is a website that allows you to independently fund projects. The basic conceit is that you put up a video explaining why you need money, and then hope that enough individuals will donate that money so that you can bring your idea to life. It is the very definition of grassroots campaigning, favoring smaller contributions from actual people over large corporate donations. In this new internet era that we live in, it is easier than ever for a small and scattered bunch of people to unite over a common interest, and now they can fund it as well.
In a lot of ways though, it reminds me of what someone once told me about finding an agent for my singing. They said, “You don’t need management until you have something to manage.” In other words, it was no use trying to get an agent for the purposes of building my resume and career. Rather, once I had something going, I could then get someone to manage it for me and build on the momentum that I already had.
One of the most successful kickstarter projects in their short history was for a web comic that I enjoy called “The Order of the Stick.” The guy who writes and draws the thing had already printed collections of his work and had a huge online fanbase, but was not mainstream popular enough to get his limited-run books reprinted, so he started a kickstarter project. He was asking for about $50,000 to reprint the collections, and he ended up with over $1.2 million pledged. And how did he do this? Well, for one thing, as I mentioned, he had pre-existing fan base that were excited to help out. And the other thing was, he was offering some cool rewards.
Part of how kickstarter works is that you set up different pledge levels, and you can associate rewards with them. So if I wanted to set up a Tenor Dad kickstarter, I might offer anyone who pledged over $100 a chance to choose a blog topic for me to write about. And if you pledged over $250, maybe I would let you guest write a blog. Stuff like that. If you have people who love what you do, and you are offering them exclusive rewards that they can’t get anywhere else, you may have a very successfull kickstarter on your hands.
Another great way to use it, for those of us in the music business, is to use it almost as a sort of pre-ordering system for your albums. An a cappella group that I used to sing with way way way back in the day, currently called Vox Pop DC, is in the middle of a kickstarter project of their own. They want to record an album, but don’t have the funds to do it, so they are looking for public funding. You can check out their page here, but what they are offering is, for anyone who pledges $15, a free digital copy of the album once it is finished. And for $25 you can get the digital version plus a physical copy. Basically, if there is enough interest in the project, they will have pre-sold hundreds of copies of their album before it is even released.
The other twist to kickstarter, however, is that if you don’t reach your fundraising goal, you get nothing. There is a time limit that you have to set, and a monetary goal that you choose very carefully, and if at the end of the time period you have not received that many pledges, the kickstarter ends and your project is not funded. Vox Pop DC, as of this morning, has about 2 days left to raise an additional $1200, or else they will not be able to produce their album.
This is very different from back when I used to be running a cappella groups and making CDs. We used to gig and gig and gig, saving up all of our money, and then spending it all on a CD that we hoped would be of good quality, but honestly would be only as good as we could afford, and then two years later half of the CDs would still be sitting in my basement. I think this kickstarter thing is a better model in this day and age, but be careful that you are being honest with yourself before you start one. Do you have a realistic view of what your project will cost, and do you seriously have enough support from people other than your Mom, so that you are not sad or embarrassed when nobody backs you?
It’s too late to fund the Order of the Stick project, so you are out of luck if you want signed copies of those books, or original sketches from Rich Burlew, but if you want to pre-order a possibly awesome a cappella album, there are still two days left to get in on the ground floor over at Vox Pop DC. And check out some other projects while you’re over there. It’s not all art and music. There are projects for food and theater and technology and all sorts of fun stuff to discover. So make somebody’s dream come true, or bring your own dreams to life. Either way, it’s pretty amazing system for us starving artists. When it works.