Was Our Crowdfunding Campaign a Success? Maybe You Can Help Me Decide.
The real numbers behind our campaign, what worked, what didn't, the hidden costs that burned me out, and whether this counts as a win.
Dear friend,
We’ve officially ended the crowdfunding campaign for my queer short film, No Animals Harmed!
Was it a success?
Well, that depends on how you define success.
Today I’m going to break down every step of that campaign — where the money came from, what we’re going to do with it, what I did that worked really well, and how I really messed up — and you can help me decide if it counts as a success.
The Hidden Costs of Crowdfunding
Let’s talk about what crowdfunding actually costs before you ever see a dollar.
Kickstarter takes 5% of anything you make.
If you use a fiscal sponsor, they usually take another 5%.
Stripe credit card and processing fees run about 3%.
So right off the bat, you lose about 13% of whatever you make.
Then you need to add the industry standard 10% contingency fee for unexpected expenses in the process of making your film.
Which means you need to raise about 23-25% more than your actual budget.
The Pros and Cons of Using Seed&Spark to Crowdfund
For our crowdfunding campaign, we used a company called Seed&Spark specifically because they don’t charge the 5% fee that Kickstarter does.
That said, nobody warned me that Seed&Spark automatically adds a 25% tip to every single donation.
My less-than-tech-savvy friends and family members didn’t know how to turn that off and found themselves paying a lot more than they thought they would. Some even told me later that they lowered the amount they donated to compensate.
I also had multiple people tell me that their user interface was really complicated and they didn’t understand everything about it.
That said, I loved Seed&Spark for the ability to break your budget into line items, which means people can loan you the amount for a specific budget item. It makes funders feel like they’re a part of the film in a specific way, not just put money into a general fund.
But that contributed to another issue with Seed$Spark: it had a few too many options for donors.
They could make a pledge, join an incentive program, loan an item, or loan cash. A little confusing for some people.
On my end as a fundraiser, it was great. But if you plan on using it, just know that the donor experience is a little complicated.
Don’t Underestimate the Physical and Emotional Costs
Crowdfunding for a whole month was exhausting. I’ve done live launches on the internet for over 10 years, but they’re rarely more than two weeks.
On top of the extra-long promotional period, my timing was not great. Not only was it in the middle of two-weeks of Pride festivities here in San Diego and I was hosting family from out of town, I went into this process having just gotten a rejection that shook my confidence.
As I said last week, in the end, I had to just sit back and let what happens happen. All of this is part of life – and there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that life is going to keep doing its thing no matter what you’re planning.
For the future, I would think about the timing. I thought Pride would help us boost interest, but everyone was distracted, exhausted and broke from the events – myself and my team included.
And I would sleep more. I would rest more. I would ask for more help.
I hope this is a reminder to both of us to build the emotional and physical cost into whatever projects we take on in the future. It’s a lesson I keep learning the hard way.
What We Raised
Now it’s time to get to the real numbers. I’m sharing them here because the transparency of friends who did crowdfunding campaigns helped me to feel confident in running mine.
If you look at our Seed&Spark campaign page, it looks like we made $16,360.
That is not true.
Here’s the thing with Seed&Spark: people can donate their time or energy towards something, and that goes towards your overall campaign number. But that doesn’t mean you raised that much cash.
Here’s the breakdown of what we raised:
Through 43 generous people — thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who donated — we raised $5,900.
That’s an average of $137.20 per person, which is pretty amazing. Our lowest donation was $5, our highest was $500, and most of it came from people who were just super excited about us making a movie here in San Diego.
That’s 43 people who believe in this film!
I also personally put in $2,480 of my own money towards the campaign so we could hit our green light number. I can’t ask my people to give money if I’m not willing to give money as well.
That took us pretty close to our green light number — the amount Seed&Spark needs to actually charge everyone and release the funds. But it wasn’t quite close enough.
So we started thinking about post-production, and the way there are lots of grants to help finish a movie. Someone gave us a loan of services — something you can uniquely do on Seed&Spark — to help us apply for grants to cover post-production.
Fun fact: there are not that many grants out there to help you make a movie, but there are a lot of grants to help you finish a movie, especially queer films. Don’t worry — as we go down that path, I’ll share everything with you. No gatekeeping here.
So that is the $16,360 broken down:
$5,900 raised by 43 generous donors
$2,480 invested by me personally
$7,980 loan of services to help us apply for post-production grants
100+ followers on the campaign
After processing fees, that gives us $8,128 in cash for the film — plus any grants we’re able to get, which we’re not counting yet because we don’t know if we’ll get them.
$8,128 is a very tight budget, but it’s enough for production.
Which means, we’re making our film this September!!
So Was Our Campaign a Success?
We didn’t hit our $20,000 goal. But we did hit $8,128, which is enough for production in September.
Was that a success?
I burnt out in the process, but I also learned so much and connected with so many people and had a really beautiful time putting myself out there.
Was that a success?
What do you think?
Here’s something I think about all the time when it comes to success:
Objectively, you could say my novel Because Fat Girl is a success — it’s in airports and bookstores, sold thousands of copies, read all over the USA and internationally.
And objectively, you could say it’s a failure — it didn’t hit the hundreds of thousands of copies we wanted, it never hit the New York Times bestsellers list.
You could call it a failure, or you can call it a success. It’s all about how you define it.
I define my books as successful by being done and out in the world. And that’s the same for this crowdfunding campaign.
We raised enough to make a movie!
That’s pretty damn cool, y’all.
And I’ll call that a success.
I Could Not Do This Without Your Support
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being a part of this. Thank you for cheering us on, joining in, sharing the campaign, and donating.
This was a hard process for me and I would have absolutely given up if not for all of your messages of encouragement and support.
It means so much to me to have a community backing this film.
Because the world needs our stories now more than ever.
With love and creativity,
Lauren
P.S. If you watch the video for this post, you’ll see me showing off some ridiculously fabulous shorts and asking if they make me look like a clown who escaped the circus in a good way or a bad way. It’s worth watching for that alone. 🤡
Here’s the post I mention afterwards, about why body-positivity and self-confidence is the key to my success:
The real success is that you now have a greenlit September production and know the difference between the headline total and usable cash. That $16,360 versus $8,128 distinction is exactly what gets lost once a film starts moving. We’re building Production Engine around keeping committed value, cash, and actuals attached to the same job. When September starts, which number will be hardest to keep current: donated services, cash spend, or remaining contingency?
Lauren, mega congrats! I know how exhausting crowdfunding is!!!! And I say your campaign WAS a SUCCESS!!!!