Boosted Stories: The Most Naked

In the midst of her blazing hot Boosted campaign, she generously sat down to share her practical tips that helped her reach the goal and secure the funds.

1. Build and work your network.

I have been in the arts industry for close to 20 years. My body of work spans multiple facets of the industry - dance, theatre, film, TV, acting, stunts, special-effects prosthetics and body paint performance, burlesque, cabaret, fetish, intimacy direction & coordination, tutoring… the list goes on.

Like so many of us I have worked my absolute ass off, pursuing all the things I am passionate about, continually upskilling and training in new areas, honing my craft, hustling hustling hustling to build up networks and audiences. The work I do, and the kind of creative skills I have, have allowed me to work across such varied spaces, from the small independent dance works being created and presented off a budget of peanuts, to being a stunt performer on major motion pictures.

I have always been highly visible and active on social media platforms to build up and promote my "brand" while also striving to be vocal, visible and actively promoting/upholding/championing social issues. All these things have afforded me a really wide network of colleagues, peers, audiences and supporters.

It feels very important for me to detail this. Not to diminish my skills, hard work or smart planning and executing - I work HARD - but to show thatI am aware of the advantage that my years in the industry have afforded me, my networks of supporters who have far more resources than most, and very philanthropic outlooks. Not everyone is in that position.
That said, I am enormously humbled and accept, very graciously, the feedback that the project we are crowd-funding for (and my creative output in general) is of high quality and that it impacts and connects with people on a very real level.

People want to back what they believe in, and I am incredibly grateful that so many people do believe in what I am doing.

My plan for our Boosted campaign was to connect with as many people and organizations that I possibly could in a way that was engaging, visually impacting and that was very honest and upfront about our need to turn to crowdfunding (read: our arts funding bodies are in bad shape).

2. Reach out for help.

I think often in the arts we underestimate how many people we have around us who want to see us succeed and help us get there if they can. You just need to ask sometimes. Because they are there, and the believe in you.
You will have more people willing to support and uplift you than you realise.

Ways you can ask for help:

• Ask trusted people to proofread your copy, or give suggestions.
• Reach out to people who have been successful in Boosted and ask for their advice - even if you don't know them. You'll be surprised how many people really want to help.
• Perhaps a friend or colleague will offer to take some slick images or video footage to accompany your campaign.
• Perhaps if you don't know how to edit, a kind person will help you edit, maybe for a koha payment or a bottle of wine or help on a project they're doing.

It’s important for me to tell you, I feel awkward about crowdfunding. I wish I weren't in a position to be asking for the public to donate. It is my last resort option. But funnily enough I never have these thoughts when I see and donate to other crowdfunding campaigns. Never. I am happy and enthusiastic about donating to campaigns when I can afford to, and I will share and champion them. As a donor and supporter, I never have any of these same awkward feelings I have about when I’m running my own campaigns.

3. Targets.

We set our Boosted target at a realistic but slightly conservative amount in comparison to what the project could reeeally use, to make it more attractive and realistic to donors. This is always a hard minefield to navigate for artists, deciding what dollar amount to ask for while keeping in mind what is happening socially and personally for people that may affect how much they are willing or able to donate.

4. Seed donors.

A core aspect of our campaign's success was Seed Donors - identifying people and organisations in your network that you know have the resources, ability and inclination to be generous in their financial support. I set up a 'soft-launch' and 'hard-launch' for the campaign. The soft launch was for seed donors only to be able to view the campaign page and donate ahead of the campaign launching publicly.

This is a really effective method in helping your campaign hit the ground running.
Seed donors ensure that there will already be 'X' amount of donations visible on the page when the public view it for the first time. To action this I spent dedicated time scouring through all my contacts and made a list of those people/orgs I would approach to be seed donors. I then composed an email, using a template I created in a previous successful Boosted campaign, to send out to each of these seed donors which laid out the project, our need for funding, a link to the Boosted page and an invitation for them to help support us by way of pre-donations. I made a point to include a personal message to each person that reflected our relationship and recent things we may have done together. In this email I also included links to a very carefully edited, video overview of the project they could watch, social media links to my professional pages to see other work I do, my website and made sure there was a gorgeous promo image of our show at the end of the email.

These seed donations absolutely took off - by the time we launched publicly a week later we were already at 73% of our target. MIND BLOWN.

I knew our campaign would be successful, but I could never have imagined that it would be that successful.

It proved that the time and energy that went into curating and contacting these seed donors and finding that balance between presenting a professional campaign while being straight up about the financial needs for the project and struggling arts climate, paid off. Very important to note is that I made sure to reply to every seed donor with a personal thank you email to show my gratitude, and that I would stay in touch to let them know the outcome of the campaign and again when the show seasons are live.

Also important is to include a request for donors to please share the campaign around their networks if they are inclined. People may not automatically think to share but it's such a vital boost of visibility to projects, especially if you're able to have people who do have big networks sharing.

5. Campaign images.

When the campaign launched publicly, I made sure I had good copy ready to go for my social media posts, that I had a good slew of media images and video to accompany these posts.
Visual media is the cherry on top and works.
I tried to be selective with social media posting and do it in chunky, spaced-out hits, rather than posting continuously about it and potentially oversaturating the audience. The focus was on impact and quality, rather than quantity. I posted across multiple Instagram and Facebook accounts, I tagged the collaborators of the project so it would show up on their pages and did my best to create captivating story posts.

6. Network shares.

I had contacted my collaborators ahead of time to lay out my plans for the campaign and asked them to share it across their networks and pages to drum up as many shares as possible. I went through my entire friends lists and sent invitations to view and support the campaign to as many of those people that I felt would be appropriate to. The campaign took off and we managed to hit our goal in less than 48 hours thanks to the reach of our combined networks.

7. Thank yous.

I have put big social media posts up expressing my deep gratitude and thanks for reaching our target in 48hours, and again tried to stay open, honest, and down to earth about the process. Thanking people is so important. Not everyone leaves their email address, and some people stay anonymous so I can't personally thank everyone, but those that do donate and leave an email, I email every single one of those people with a short but personal thank you. I think this is so important. Many of the people who donated were people who donated to a previous campaign I had run.
You never know when the simple but vital act of thanking someone for their support will lead them to wanting to continue to support you in the future.

In summary.

Plan. Identify supporters. Reach out ahead of time. Be honest. Collate or create clever visual media to support your campaign. Bite the bullet and email/message as many people as you feel comfortable doing - most people do not mind a copy-paste message from a friend asking them to support. THANK EVERYONE.