New Funding Options For Your Business

One ever-evolving area of the entertainment industry that I believe deserves a
further look – is the often overlooked area of finance. As artists and entertainers are
more concerned with ‘creating’ the end result, they can often run into a number of
hurdles when the time comes to finance the final production or product.

Finance and accounting has historically had a number of negative stigmas attached
to it - it is often considered to be boring, lacking creativity and more hassle then it is
worth. This has changed dramatically since the utilization of the Internet for sharing
ideas, videos, products and collaborations.

Not only is the birth of Social Funding creating a new avenue for artists to gain
support and much needed funding, but it is also helping to keep alive many lost
arts. One of my personal favorite examples of this is a phenomenal website
www.kickstarter.com. One of the pioneers of collective social funding, it’s a site
where you create a pitch for a product/design/art/production etc and you decide
how much you need to complete the project. Then you wait and see if people
gravitate to your idea and want to help support your idea. If you get 100% funding
then you get it all, if you don’t get 100% of it – then you don’t get any of it, but you
get a chance to try again. Even if you fail to get financing – you still get access to
much needed feedback and of course publicity.

Kickstarter Project

Check this page out! It is a perfect example of how over 2,000 ordinary people got
together to support a mixed media project that may not have seen the light of day
if it wasn’t for social funding. Not only are they creating a piece of art, they are also
keeping vinyl alive. The project needed $6,500 to be successful, and ended up with a
staggering $61,218!

This new avenue that is available for artists and entertainers alike has the potential
to bring so much more undervalued and under appreciated work to the masses. This
can only be a good thing! Personally speaking, I love the idea that I can have an idea
for a show and I can get it off the ground a lot faster with the likes of Kickstarter
and other social funding resources. The funding provided can help provide a higher
caliber of work to the end user.

It’s an exciting time to be graduating from college with an eagerness to create!
When I graduated from my Drama Degree from the University of Washington, I
remember discussing an article discussing the impact an economic recession has on
the art’s organizations. It went on to discuss the decrease in funding to help keep the
doors open, the potential decrease in quality and the decrease in attendance. While
this scared and saddened me to hear, the new finance avenues available to budding
artists and entertainers really excite me.

Bob Dylan said it best – “ The Times They Are a-Changin’ ” (Jan 1964).

Related Links:

http://www.arts.wa.gov/projects/documents/Arts-And-Recession.pdf&pli=1

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCWdCKPtnYE