Crowdfunding as a way to fund your project

Crowdfunding

I have not heard a great deal about it and certainly no one i know has ever asked me to contribute to their crowd funding project, quite possibly that is a good thing as i spend most of my money on my photographs! But then i had an idea for a photographic project and as it developed i realised i was going to have to fund it in some way. My project is called ‘Poverty is a state of mind’ and i started it because of the things i have read in the media and experienced my self with regard to benefits and the stigma attached to people on them. I knew what i wanted to aim for and realised that as i am a landscape photographer i would actually need a new camera lens as all the ones i have are telephoto/zoom and if i am going to speak to charities and individuals it would be nice to be able to offer a donation for their time. Then i have the cost of printing my photographs to exhibit them, so there is indeed quite an expense to be covered. I looked at a few crowdfunding sites, Justgiving, Fundingtree, Kickstarter, Indigogo to name a few, there are literally loads out there and decided to go with Fotofund as it is aimed at photographers.

Crowdfunding is a way of raising your finance by asking a large number of people each for a small amount of money. Crowdfunding uses the internet to talk to thousands – if not millions – of potential funders. Typically, those seeking funds will set up a profile of their project on a website (Fotofund) then they can then use social media, alongside traditional networks of friends, family and work aquaintances, to raise money. Once a donation is made you then reward the donor with something, either a photograph or set of photographs from your project down to a thank you on social media. Typically you would work an hour a day posting on your blog, up dating your website, using social media, sending emails and ringing potential donors. Its hard graft and you have to do it to see the results.

You can visit my Fotofund page at http://en.fotofund.org/campaigns/poverty-state-mind-damn-government-dictates/  pass it along on your social media if you would and look out for future posts.

 

Poverty is a state of mind project

Poverty is a state of mind

My Fotofund project is in need of donations. I am running out of time and money and need to find backers as soon as possible. Please click on the link and read about my project, i think it is a worth while subject.

‘I want to document the effects the austerity measures have created. The struggle families go through to provide the basic necessities for every day living. The struggle young people go through to find work and the punitive measures used against them if they fail. To explore the changes it has made in the definition of poverty and how it differs in the 21st century.’

‘There have been so many changes to the benefit system. No longer do you get to sign on, walk out the door and collect your money. Now it is job searching 6 days a week and prove it. They have moved the posts on disability benefits. Where once you were helped if you couldn’t do certain things, now you are helped because you can do certain things, only this way there are significantly more people taken off the benefit than are helped. We now have ‘sanctions’ the suspension of your benefit if you don’t toe the line. I want to document the struggle, heartache, despair, that is felt by the people who perhaps didn’t vote in the Tory government and to do that i want to produce a body of photographic work that will show case the emotion, bring to your attention the abject poverty modern families find themselves in.  To show you the effects of the reforms on men, women and children and what it can do to their mental well being’………..