Crowdfunding Free Software

About Deb

• Long-time political activist!
• Free software activist!
  • MediaGoblin co-founder / community
  • Now: OIN, OpenHatch, other stuff
  • Formerly: Ada Initiative, FSF
• Co-organizer of MediaGoblin campaign!

About Chris

• Lead MediaGoblin developer!
• Free software and free culture activist
  • MediaGoblin co-founder / lead dev
  • Now: full time MediaGoblin
  • Formerly: CC, PCF, other things
• Liberated Pixel Cup!
• MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign!

MediaGoblin

MediaGoblin is a free software media publishing system anyone can use and run!

MediaGoblin's campaigns

We ran two fundraising campaigns with the FSF!

Between the two, over 100k raised

Campaign page and video

Let's see the campaign page: http://mediagoblin.org/pages/campaign.html

Going to show the video (clear intro for the project, and useful for later…)

So you want to run a crowdfunding campaign

The "crowdfunding phenomena"

Quick overview: Introducing the timeline

Launching a campaign takes about 3 months…

• General planning:
  • What are you doing, why?
  • Who's your audience?
  • Where are you running it?
  • Rewards?
• Video (A whole thing in itself)
  • Planning
  • Executing
• Prepping launch page
• Gathering allies / news
• Launch
• Daily grind: keep it going
• Celebrate!

And then

• Producing, shipping rewards
• Execution!
• Regular updates to backers!

Will it be ok if you miss your goal?

MediaGoblin campaign 1 under MediaGoblin campaign 2 banner

What if it doesn't go viral a la Diaspora

• Most projects don't!
• Use an "all or nothing" model?
  • Can you really afford it if you don't make it?
  • Are you going to do it anyway?

What if it does? (v1)

• Yay! Jackpot!
• But now the real work starts
• Can you handle the overflow?

What if it does? (v2)

What if it does? (v3)

Setting expectations internally, and externally

Where to host it?

Use a crowdfunding platform, nonprofit infrastructure, or do it yourself?

• Doing it yourself
  • Lots of control
  • But lots of work
• Using a hosted, proprietary solution
  • Convenient
  • Built in social networking tools
  • At the whims of said org
  • Fee going to a corporation
• Work with a nonprofit
  • Use the same fundraising infrastructure the nonprofit does
  • Fiscal sponsorship: huge!
  • Tax deductable donations
  • Fee going to a nonprofit you presumably believe in

Free software solutions that are available?

• Increasing numbers of these nowadays…
  • geoteo.org
  • "bounty hunting" kind of crowdfunding (freedomsponsors, lots of older ones)
• Roll your own!
  • Pitivi did this
  • Joey Hess did git-annex + ikiwiki + ledger
• CiviCRM or other "traditional" fundraising tools
• MediaGoblin used the FSF's CiviCRM + our own static site

What are the major upsides?

• Fund your project without compromising your mission
• Community is not just giving you money, but investing themselves personally
• Learn how your project is perceived externally

Major downsides?

• Timing, both external and internal
• Running a campaign is another job
• Fulfilling a campaign may be another job

Plan your video early!

Videos take a lot of work, and are one of the strongest sources of impressions of a campaign these days…

How much work? Depends on complexity; we followed standard-ish film/animation steps:

Make script outline

Draft / refine script

Make storyboard

Do animation tests

Do voiceover

Shoot video

Animate

Video edit / sequencing

Planning rewards

Plan and price your rewards in advance of offering them

• Should be no more than 25% of the reward "cost"
• Shipping costs can kick your butt, esp internationally
• Authoring times? Printing times? Shipping times?

Get your allies together

Make it easy for people to help you

Consider "in-kind" help

You're most likely to get help if it works mutually

Cookie factory: more likely to give you cookies than money!

Prep the presses

• Try to get press ready for your own launch, eg
  • Your announcement post (critical!)
  • Journalism
  • Allies
• Have some of your own news planned ahead of time
  • Plan some things to announce mid-campaign
  • Have a list of people to reach out to throughout the campaign

Campaign launch

• Launch is critical
• Limited pre-launch?
• Prep as best as you can, but don't let hiccups get you down

Keeping it going

Common pitfalls

• Delivering rewards: don't lose your shirt sending shirts
• Do or don't quit your day job?

The end! (??)

Congrats, you made it!

(Of course: now you need to ship rewards, and keep your promises!)

Finances

We did a complete financial breakdown:

http://mediagoblin.org/news/financial-transparency.html

How much time does it take?

• The first campaign took about 2.5 months to launch, ran for 1
• Second campaign took about 4 months to launch, ran for 2
• For me: 10-12 hour days, few weekends
• Both have several weeks of work afterwards on rewards fulfillment
• So really, about 3.5-7 months on the campaign on each
• Remember: this is an unpaid period of work!

So was it worth it? (post-mortem!)

• It's not "easy money"… expect long periods of stress, weight gain, hair loss
• But yes, it was worth it!
  • 2 person-years of full time development (and more)
  • We're accomplishing what we set out to do
  • We're staying true to our goals/values
  • Donors seem happy

Credits

• "End of the Rainbow" image by KaiScheiber, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Squirrel jackpot image by likeaduck, CC BY-SA 2.0
• Squirrel out in the cold by DawnHuczek, CC BY 2.0
• Pot of gold and a bench by AndyHay, CC BY 2.0
• Pile of gold coins background image, CC BY 2.0
• Pile of cash, Nick Ares, CC BY 2.0

Credits (2)

• Dude fighting a clock from Metropolis, fair use
• Linux Magazine screen grab from http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Features/MediaGoblin-Saving-the-Internet-Through-Federation
• Photo of Deb: Lindsay Metivier

Otherwise else, this talk is dual licensed:

CC BY-SA 4.0 International || GPLv3 or later

Thank you! (Questions?)

http://mediagoblin.org/

• Deb: deb@eximiousproductions.org
• Chris: cwebber@dustycloud.org
• git clone https://gitlab.com/dustyweb/talks.git