Written evidence submitted by Michael
Ohajuru (arts 147)
1. SUMMARY
As an alternative to patronage of the arts being
Government funded the reserve of the wealthy I am suggesting using
the established principle of crowd funding.
With crowd funding rather than relying on a Government
grant or a single wealthy individual, family or institution to
fund an art project the funding is broken down into smaller funded
units and in return for contributing to the funding the project
the donors receive a benefit in kind from the project or the institution.
Today crowding funding is being used by election
campaigns, start-up businesses, charities, musicians, films, festivals
and others to raise funds from tens to millions of dollars.
Crowd Funding successes include:
The Obama Election campaign which
thru crowd funding via the internet and viral marketing to raised
many millions of dollars from small donations from millions of
people.
Crowd Funding possibilities include:
Creating connections between local
societies and national collections for example a group of local
village historians could sponsor or fund some aspect of piece
of medieval church furniture which has also can be found in their
village.
2. WHAT IS
CROWD FUNDING?
2.1 Whitelabelcrowdfunding.com Definition
Crowdfunding allows regular people to raise
money [usually via the Internet] for the personal projects, ideas,
events and initiatives that matter to them most. Supporters donate
to the people and causes they believe in. For example, you might
"crowdfund" your honeymoon with gift money from your
wedding guests. Or, you could `crowdfund' your pet's surgery with
donations from your friends, family and neighbours. Crowdfunding
helps people collect the money needed to bring their fundraising
ideas to life.
http://whitelabelcrowdfunding.com/crowdfunding-questions/
2.2 Trampoline Systems Definition
Crowdfunding is an alternative approach to raising
finance. It's evolved over the last decade, first in the film
and music industries, then in journalism and now in venture finance.
Unlike traditional models which rely on large commitments from
one or two institutions crowdfunding is based on raising smaller
sums from lots of people, who may be linked by social networks
or shared interests.
http://crowdfunding.trampolinesystems.com/
2.3 Wikipedia Definition
Crowd funding (sometimes called crowd financing or
crowd sourced capital) describes the collective cooperation, attention
and trust by people who network and pool their money together,
usually via the Internet, in order to support efforts initiated
by other people or organizations. Crowd funding occurs for any
variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen journalism
to artists seeking support from fans, to political campaigns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_funding
3. WHAT ARE
THE BENEFITS
OF CROWD
FUNDING?
3.1 Connects with a younger demographic
Crowd funding is normally internet based and so connects
Museums and Galleries with a younger demographic. This generation
is more use to being on line using social network sites such as:
| BeBo | http://www.bebo.com/
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| Facebook | http://www.facebook.com
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| Twitter | http://twitter.com/
|
| MySpace | http://www.myspace.com/
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They are also use to working collaboratively on line in games
such as:
| World of Warcraft | http://www.worldofwarcraft.com
|
| Halo | http://halo.xbox.com
|
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or making, tracking and giving to charities via the web as
sites such as:
| eTapestery | www.etapestry.com/
|
| just giving | http://www.justgiving.com/
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3.2 Identifies the Popular Project
Through its viral nature crowd funding quickly identifies
those campaigns which strike a chord with the target audience
and so take off rapidly while others languish. This allows campaigns
or projects to be reassessed rapidly making separating the wheat
from the chaff much easier or giving focus to those projects which
need to be redefined in some way.
3.3 Reaches out to the community
Like eBay (http://www.ebay.co.uk/) and Flikr (http://www.flickr.com/)
crowd funding is about creating and sustaining communities for
a specific purpose eBay buying and selling communities of special
interest groups; Flikr creating photograph sharing communities.
Many art and cultural institution recognise the importance
of on-line social network communities—Tate, The National
Gallery and The V and A for example all have Facebook sites and
Twitter sites. Crowd funding is a natural part of that reaching
out to the Internet community.
3.4 Creates Connections local, national and international
Crowd funding can help the Institutions to connect with communities
independent of distance bringing them together and uniting them
around common causes.
3.5 Increases the benefactor options
Crowds funding is democratising—no longer would institutions
be reliant on the whim of one major benefactor but can take its
funding needs literally to the people. The crowd funding entry
points could be priced for a variety of pockets and the fund required
could be split a variety of ways depending for example on the
target communities.
3.6 Low cost, Low risk Entry
The entry costs are minimal as most Intuitions have a way
of collecting money for tickets. An additional suitably worded
web page could introduce and present crowd funded projects. Some
crowd funding sites are in fact free. They take a share of the
money raised. The size of the project could be chosen to present
minimal risk to the institution.
4. CURRENT EXAMPLES
OF CROWD
FUNDING
4.1 Individual and not-for-profit organisations
White-Label Crowdfunding (http://whitelabelcrowdfunding.com/)
White-Label Crowdfunding is considered to be the World's first
fully re-brandable (or private-label) online crowdfunding software
available for re-sale by third-party vendors and brands.
They provide the services to two crowd funding sites:
CreateaFund (http://www.createafund.com): CreateaFund
provides crowdfunding solutions for small-to-medium sized non-profit
organisations and charities. The offering includes functionality
for multiple user-accounts and email marketing campaign management.
GoFundMe (http://gofundme.com): GoFundMe gives
individual users the tools to raise money online for their fundraising
ideas. The crowdfunding solution empowers users to raise money
for personal initiatives through social networking channels such
as Facebook and Twitter.
Source: http://www.crunchbase.com/company/white-label-crowdfunding
4.2 Funding and Following Creativity
Kickstarter uses crowd funding to fund creative ideas and
ambitious endeavours. They believe that:
— A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and
wide.
— A large group of people can be a tremendous source
of money and encouragement.
Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding
method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes
hands and project is fails.
http://www.kickstarter.com
4.3 Start-ups
Trampoline Systems, the award-winning enterprise software vendor,
has pioneered an unconventional approach to finance its growth.
Instead of raising money from venture capital firms Trampoline
is using the technique called "crowdfunding", raising
smaller stakes from a community of smart private investors.
http://crowdfunding.trampolinesystems.com/
4.4 US Presidential Campaign
Presidents Obama success is attributed to his use of the Internet
to virally source funds. A quote from the BBC at the time of the
election (Thursday, 19 June 2008 ) underlines the point:
Mr Obama has so far raised an unprecedented $265 million (£134.5
million) in donations in his presidential race, most of it from
small donations given over the internet.
This dwarfs the nearly $97 million Mr McCain has so far raised.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7463813.stm
5. A SAMPLE POSSIBLE
CROWD FUNDED
PROJECT AT
THE V&A
The recently renovated Victoria and Albert Museum's Medieval
and Renaissance Galleries relies in the main for traditional wall
plaques, essentially the same presentation technique dating back
to the first museums founded in the seventeenth century. Further
there appears to be little or no British examples in the these
Galleries as the finest pieces are to be found the British Galleries.
Appropriately designed interactive on-line guides based on
podcasts* could be used to describe the Museum's Medieval and
Renaissance Galleries pieces bringing the presentation up to date
and at the same time where necessary make the connection to pieces
in the British Galleries.
This work could be funded by crowd funding.
The total cost of the project could be broken down to cost
of the podcast for each piece and offered as part of a crowd funded
project, with the sponsor for each piece could be noted on the
podcast.
* A podcast (or non-streamed webcast) is a series of digital
media files (either audio or video) that are released episodically
and often downloaded through web syndication. The word usurped
webcast in common vernacular, due to rising popularity of the
iPod and the innovation of web feeds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
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