Five Grand, Five Days

RESULTS

YES we did! Thanks to a last-minute gift, we met and just exceeded our five grand goal! Thank you to everyone who contributed either by phoning the office, making a donation, nominating someone to our board, or just offering an email of encouragement. We do the best we can with limited resources and knowing you are out there has given us fuel to keep going, at least for the meanwhile. (Remember, we were asking for the bare minimum!)

Note to donors: Please be patient as we send official thanks and mail books in the order in which donations were received.

Special thanks to donors like EM who told me she has "scraped the bottom as a filmmaker and is still scraping the bottom to come up with this donation," or NC who declined the book and wrote, "I'm just hoping you can continue to do a great job."

Here are more unanticipated highlights from this campaign:

We certainly encourage (and need gifts throughout the year.p>

There are three ways to donate:
Donate online with a credit card.

Mail a check to:
Independent Media Publications
PO Box 391620
Cambridge, MA 02139

Donate by Facebook Cause

Below is a summary of the campaign.

DAY FIVE - LAST CALL

We're at day five:  final email, last call.  We'd like to say that our glass is (at least) half full, but it's not.  At the time of this writing, we've reached 40 percent of our ability to cover basic costs for 2010. 

However, after yesterday's email, we doubled our contributors from 18 to 36 people in mere hours.  Contributions of all sizes flooded the gates and with every one, we felt a little more determined to keep going. Thank you!

There's still time! If just 60 people make a $50 donation today -- enough to get you a complimentary copy of The Independent’s Guide to Film Distributors -- we'll be able to breathe easier and focus our attention on special projects, such as preserving our archives and creating a mentorship program for arts journalists.

Or maybe 300 people make a $10 contribution.  Ten bucks? That's what lunch costs, right?

Regardless of the outcome, we want to thank you for reading, for receiving our enews blasts, and for caring about film -- narrative and docs, features and shorts, animated and live action, even crazy YouTube videos.  We've never embarked on a campaign like this and you've helped make it worthwhile. 

Our hope was that with the five-day onslaught, we wouldn't have to ask again until the end of 2010. 

All I can say is let's see what happens in the next few hours.

DAY FOUR - STRAIGHT TALK

When you're asking for money, it's hard to know how honest to be. Our job is to demonstrate an urgent need without appearing too vulnerable. Independent filmmakers understand this juggling act.

In the first three days of our campaign, we've raised $1,085 from 18 donors, with 100 percent participation from our board.  On one hand, this is a thrilling demonstration of support and a morale boost for those of us toiling on the back end of the web.  Yet I worried that telling you the numbers would make you think that our outreach hasn't been a success. Or that you'd be discouraged from donating because we are so far from meeting our five grand goal.

I likewise debated whether or not I should be completely up front about our financial situation. Several competent writing professionals contacted me in the last few days with pitches for great stories and I had to tell them the truth: We currently can not pay our writers or editorial staff.

Our Five Grand, Five Days fundraising campaign will cover the costs of web hosting, storage of the print magazine, phone, association fees, and other incidentals related to virtual overhead and keep our basics covered through 2010. If we raise more, we can stipend writers, fund our archive project, and create a new program to mentor arts journalists.

Please help us reach our five grand goal today. Keep us here through 2010.

Remember, donations of $50 or more will receive a complimentary copy of The Independent’s Guide to Film Distributors. There is no gift too small.  If you have an extra $5, or $10 vote of confidence, please send it our way. 

DAY THREE - LARGE GIFT?

Can't tell you what a relief it is to know you're out there! Donations have been rolling in -- especially at the $50 level -- because that qualifies you to receive a complimentary copy of The Independent’s Guide to Film Distributors. But let's just say we need more of you to donate, and fast!

Today we are upping the ante on our challenge in the hopes that some dedicated supporter will pull through with a LARGE gift to help get our archive project out of the literal New Jersey garage. Don't you wish you could read about director Lee Daniels before Precious? We wish we could offer you an easy, searchable database of our archives but right now, we don't have the resources. Maybe that will change by the end of day three...

DAY TWO - ADDITIONAL WAYS TO HELP

New ideas for how you can help:

• Get friends and colleagues to subscribe to our email list.  It's easy, free, and the more subscribers we have, the more appealing we are to advertisers, grantmakers, and persons who care about independent film.
• Send us names of foundations or requests for grant or award proposals that would support our work. 
• Become an active member in our online community by commenting on one of our current stories.
• Make a financial contribution today. Don't wait for day three, four, or five.

DAY ONE - WE NEED YOU, DO YOU NEED US?

Rupert Murdoch can’t figure out how to get you to pay for online content. And neither can we. But be certain, we need you.

And here’s why you need us:

We work hard to report stories that no one else reports. Take, for example, the investigative story about ITVS funding that past executive director and publisher Michele Meek worked on for several months, in her spare time, because The Independent understands what’s at stake when government funding loses transparency.

We provide resources that no one else provides. In July we published The Independent’s Guide to Film Distributors, an all-in-one directory for getting your film into the right hands. We have the potential to publish a similar guide about film exhibitors along with access to a constantly updated online database.

We report on filmmakers, festivals, exhibitors, distributors, trends, and more each month to inform storytelling by independent voices, those bypassed by celebrity-driven media.

We have a vital archive of independent film history. For almost 30 years the print Independent Film & Video Monthly turned the spotlight on film artists and activists working outside the mainstream. Yet this irreplaceable resource remains in storage, not yet digitized. Our goal for 2010 is to secure a proper virtual home for this rare contribution to American film history.

We want to do all this, and so much more in 2010. But without you, we’re stuck.

Here’s how you can help:

• Make a tax-deductible contribution equal to a dinner and a movie, or one month of cable, or more.
• Consider a larger gift, such as underwriting our archive project, or funding an investigative journalism internship for an up-and-coming arts reporter.
• Nominate yourself or a person of influence to our board of directors or board of advisors.
• Send us story ideas -- not films or businesses that need publicity -- rather, stories that will preserve filmmakers’ ability to remain independent.
• Help us secure a future for The Independent by sharing an idea not listed here.

We need to raise $5,000 in December. And we're hoping to do it in five days. Please join us. And help us spread the word!