My good mate Kate Toon yet again puts her hand up for the hardest working mum award! I’ve known Kate for well over a decade when we both emigrated to Oz and worked for Singleton Ogilvy & Mather‘s first interactive division in 1999.
We lost touch for a few years when Kate returned to England ( it was pre Facebook!) but met up again when Kate returned to Sydney in 2007ish, and through our mutual interest in film, theatre and digital media have become good friends.
I was thrilled to produce and direct the short film of her award winning play ‘Bomb Disposal‘ which we renamed ‘The Postcard‘
Anyhoo, as well as Mum, SEO and copywriting guru, and playwright, Kate is about to become a published poet, using Pozible to raise funds,
Check out her project here
Hope you can spare a few bob to help her in her cause.
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No sooner had I published this post, saw this article in Screenhub – an interview with Pozible Founder Rick Chen
Rick Chen: everything is Pozible
by: Anne Richey
Screen Hub
Wednesday 25 January, 2012
In a world where everything costs money and funding grants are scarce, how do you find the resources to create your masterpiece? The impossible just became Pozible.
The crowdfunding site Pozible has been operating for around 18 months now, and although it’s still quite a new concept, it’s going well. They currently have around 200-300 large projects listed, across various artforms including film, art, community, design, fashion, photography, technology and writing.
Pozible co-founder Rick Chen pointed out that people are becoming more and more comfortable with the crowdfunding concept, and they’ve found that around 40% of these projects are successful at raising their target amount.
The projects which tend to work the best on the site are those which “have a project creator with a real passion,” according to Rick. He’s found that it doesn’t matter what they’re doing as long as they have a passion for it. It also helps if friends and family are aware of the project. “That sort of thing generally works really well because once you put it out…you receive support from people you know instantly,” Rick said. He added that it also works very well for people with a large fan base such as musicians or filmmakers.
Around 37% of the projects listed on the site are from filmmakers.
If the target amount is reached, any amounts above and beyond the 100% are also transferred to the artist. There’s no upper limit and the portal remains open right up to the deadline. Some projects have raised 200% or 300% more than they were aiming for.
If the target amount isn’t reached, then no money is transferred.
Pozible generally takes 7.5% of donations in administrative costs, but this is reduced to 5% if people are members of their partner organisations. Their partners include APRA/ACMOS, QPIX, Emerging Writers’ Festival, Sydney Film School, Metro Screen, Creative Sydney, Wide Angle Tasmania and ANAT.
They work with some government agencies as well, including Music Victoria and Music NSW. They also have people referred to their site through government agencies when they’re ineligible for grants.
Charitable projects aren’t supported by Pozible at the moment as they have traditional and stable funding strands. They instead “wanted to open a new door to the creative industry, which generally doesn’t have a lot of options to raise money for their projects.”
Rick became involved through the Sydney arts scene. He and co-founder Alan Crabbe were working with a lot of digital artists, and they found that many of the artists were looking for a way to pre-sell their goods. Providing a platform for crowdfunding seemed like the best way to achieve this goal.
At the time, Pozible was called Fundbreak. The change of name occurred when they discovered that they couldn’t get the ‘Fundbreak’ registered as a business name.
Ross Hill, the co-founder of The Awesome Foundation in Melbourne with Edward Harran, works in the same office as Rick. Rick has known him for a long time, and a collaboration with them was always on the cards.
Rick described how the decision to join forces came very naturally, and surprised none of their co-workers in their creative office area. It’s also had a very positive reaction from the public, and “people see that sort of thing more and more in the future as well, and from our end, we wanted to push it even more into other philanthropic foundations, even government grants in the future if that’s possible.”
Rick will be a member of the second Awesome Foundation which is starting up in Melbourne. They’ll be giving out their first grants on 22nd of February at a Mega Grant Party. Their first grant will be for $3,000 plus.
They’re fundraising for the party on Pozible, and people who donate $50 to the party are able to vote for the recipient of the Mega Grant.
Generally though, anyone who applies through the Awesome Foundation website or through the Pozible website is put into a pool, and the top ten will then be taken to the board and the one with the most votes wins the money.
The aim is to donate $1000 to one project each month with no strings attached. The criteria is that the recipient must have ‘the most awesome crazy brilliant idea as voted by the foundation.’
Rick suggested that for filmmakers in particular, it would be an excellent time to apply for The Awesome Foundation grant and to list their projects on Pozible.
Anne Richey
Anne Richey is a screenwriter and Screen Hub’s assistant editor.
