Recently, two rather startling requests showed up in my inbox. The first invited me to take part in the popular concept of crowdsourcing to fund a project. The second was a request for a recommendation via LinkedIn, the networking site for business professionals.
So what was so startling about these requests? I didn’t immediately recognize the name of the person asking me for money to fund his education. My reaction was to snort and say to myself, “Sure, I’ll help pay for your degree if you’ll help pay my mortgage!” But discretion is the better part of valor and, on closer inspection, I recognized the young man as someone who had attended one of my workshops and apparently taken to heart the spirit, if not the letter, of my advice on networking.
I did recognize the name of person requesting the recommendation, but since I only know her minimally through social media and have never met her personally or had any contact with her work, I simply wrote a short note explaining why I couldn’t accommodate her request. She wrote back a nice note, and thereupon we both learned something valuable: if you’re not extremely careful about your settings on LinkedIn, apparently it will send out requests like these unbeknownst to you, to whatever contact on your list fits whatever algorithm it’s using. I checked my settings immediately!
Networking has always been a critical element of an artist’s self-marketing agenda, and these days crowdsourcing and crowdfunding have become extremely valuable tools. For those who aren’t familiar with the term crowdsourcing, it simply means seeking resources from a large group of people, especially an online group. When these resources are financial, this is called crowdfunding. But they could also be ideas/content (the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a prime example) or services (such as CareCalendar.org, which allows friends and relatives to schedule times they can supply a hot meal or run errands for an acquaintance in need).
Facebook itself can be an informal way to crowdsource. How many times have you used it to ask your friends if anybody has a couch you can stay on for an audition? Or if anybody can send you a PDF of a piece of music you suddenly require? Whenever someone asks you to repost about a pet that needs adopting or help think up repertoire for a recital, that’s crowdsourcing.
The concept of crowdsourcing is not new. For example, in the 1870s, Sir James Murray, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, solicited the help of hundreds of amateur linguists and lovers of literature to collect words and definitions for the book. The Internet, with its boundless networking and social media opportunities, has transformed crowdsourcing by making it instantly accessible to millions of potential donors—and making it easy to target groups most likely to be interested in helping with a specific project.
And crowdsourcing has a unique advantage over traditional methods of collecting resources. Sure, you start off asking your friends, family, and acquaintances for help—but thanks to the platform many of these sites use, you might also be inviting friends of friends or complete strangers to help out with your project with donations of money, time, expertise, or knowledge. This is where it gets tricky.
My first conscious experience with crowdsourcing was via a site called www.SaveKaryn.com. A self-described shopaholic found herself $20,000 in debt and, after being laid off, unable to manage any longer. She started a website in which she frankly described her predicament and, point blank, asked people to send her money—“a buck or two.”
At the time, many people (myself among them) were outraged by this young woman’s audacity. Why should we bail a complete stranger out of her first-world, bad-choice predicament? Others, however, found her site funny and appreciated her moxie. She got a lot of attention in the media—much of it negative—but, long story short, despite the controversy over her brazen tactics, it worked. Complete strangers bought into Karyn’s story and were willing to send $1 or $5 or 20 bucks. Eventually, she paid off her credit card debt and paid it forward by collecting for other causes, parlaying her adventures into a book and then another and another. Not bad.
Nowadays such pleas are commonplace—so commonplace as to make it much harder to get attention for your project or cause. We’re all bombarded every day by advertisements and bills and requests for money. When such requests come, unsolicited, from strangers asking for us to spend our hard-earned dollars on their personal projects, it can come across as effrontery. So, it’s important to choose your platform, target audience, and project carefully—and to really spend time and effort developing your campaign.
There are many wonderful and inexpensive-to-free online platforms for fundraising, such as Kickstarter, IndieGo, and GoFundMe. Each has its own set of rules and benefits, and it’s important to spend some time figuring out which one is right for your project. Depending on how your campaign is set up, requests for donations that you originally send to people you know may also be automatically broadcast to their networks. Thus, people find requests for money from complete strangers showing up in their mailboxes and Facebook newsfeeds.
So this is where it gets tricky. A certain amount of care has to be employed when one is asking for money and support, whether it’s through a phone call, letter, or e-mail campaign. The point of crowdfunding is not only to finance your immediate project, but to get people invested in you—interested in you, your art, your career on a long-term basis. You’re not seeking mere donors. You want patrons. And you will not attract patrons if you are careless, rude, or annoying.
Here are some tips for courteous crowdfunding:
• Choose your projects wisely and space them well apart. You don’t want to be that person who keeps hitting your friends and family up for money until they hate to see you coming. Sure, singing is an expensive proposition and artists are perpetually in need of cash, but at some point you have to show people that you’re able to support your art yourself. Make sure when you ask for money, it’s for something really important.
• Be judicious when deciding who to ask for help. Don’t send your plea out to your entire mailing or friends list—it just looks like a big money grab when you hit up someone you just met, barely know, or haven’t spoken to in years. Don’t Google search on-topic forums and boards and spam them with funding requests. Rather, spend time becoming a member of the community, sharing knowledge and support with others—then when it comes time to get help for your own project, you will have established a relationship with likeminded people who may be willing to throw a few dollars your way for a good cause.
• Mailing lists are a great way of keeping in touch, but they must be handled with care. If you don’t want people hitting the Delete button every time your name comes up on the screen, don’t subscribe to anyone who has not asked to be added. A one-off mailing is okay; asking people to join your mailing list is fine. Subscribing people to mailing lists without their knowledge or permission is rude. It is the equivalent of leaving trash on a friend’s doorstep and expecting them to deal with it.
• If you do send a one-off mailing, make sure people know they have not been added to a list. Be sure to include a prominently featured and easy-to-manage unsubscribe link for your mailing list, and make sure that those who do unsubscribe are promptly removed from your list.
• Don’t spam your potential donors—it’s a huge turnoff. Keep your mailings short, informative, and infrequent, but regular.
Of course, courtesy is desirable not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because it creates good will, thus contributing to the success of your project. But success can’t rely on good manners alone. Try these tips for a successful crowdfunding campaign:
• Make sure that your project is clearly defined. Outline specific goals that you hope to accomplish. Use layman’s terms, or explain concisely (be sure to show why the item is important), and give simple but striking examples. Relate the term to something everyone has experienced. For example, most “civilians” won’t know what a masterclass is or how it can help a singer develop. So you might say, “A masterclass is a little bit like American Idol, except usually there’s just one ‘judge’ and, like the judges on American Idol, the master teacher is an expert. You sing in front of an audience, and the master teacher evaluates you, gives you advice, and works with you. It’s important for young singers to get this kind of perspective from someone who is highly successful; it’s also valuable to observe even if you don’t sing yourself, because you get to see things you might also be working on.”
• Tell people why your project is important—not just to you, but to your community. If you can show direct impact (“This newly commissioned children’s opera will be presented at over 10 local schools!”), all the better. But more general benefits are worthy, too (“I will be representing Hometown, USA, Population 4215, in an international singing competition in Paris, France!”).
• People like to know what their money is buying, so be very specific. It can be a great fundraising tool to show people that even as little as $5 or $10 can help. So break it down for them: “$10 will buy 5 subway rides to get me to auditions and coaching. $25 will pay for an audition fee. $100 buys a Europass train ticket to get me to an audition in a distant city. $75 pays for a coaching.”
• Update your fundraising site often, with photos, video, and encouragement (many of the fundraising platforms make it very easy for you to do this with e-mail reminders and automatic reposts to social media). Make it personal. Show the work you’re doing and report on successes. Write little blurbs about other people who may be involved—the agent you’re going to sing for, the important teacher you’re working with—and show people some of the nitty gritty. (People love to see what goes on behind the curtain, especially arts patrons.)
• Consider offering incentives or rewards for bigger donations: preferred seating, discounted tickets, a CD of your singing. Publish these on your fundraising website and encourage people to “buy” them. Then make absolutely sure that you make good on those rewards in a timely manner.
• When someone contributes, thank them immediately and publicly (unless they’ve made it clear they prefer anonymity). Thank them personally with a note, and also thank them in a program, if you have one, and/or on your website. Never underestimate the importance of saying “thank you” . . . or the potential damage of forgetting to thank someone promptly and properly.
Crowdfunding and crowdsourcing are powerful tools that can really work in your favor—or backfire horribly. Consider learning how to crowdsource and fundraise as two more valuable tools for your career as a performer. And remember: courtesy is always one of the most valuable assets any professional, in any profession, can possess.
