Crowdfunding lessons

Film Crowdfunding Success: Lessons From 50+ Campaigns

In October 2025, Indiegogo was bought by Gamefound, another crowdfunding platform. Over the past decade, I have coached clients through over 50 successful crowdfunding campaigns, the majority of which were on Indiegogo.

We mostly used Indiegogo because I teach a very low key approach to crowdfunding. We raise modest amounts of money - $12,000 for a short and a minimum of $20,000 for a feature. On the Indiegogo platform we kept everything we raised, even if we didn’t make our goal. In the cases of my clients, we nearly always made our goal of that $20,000 minimum, but we didn’t necessarily raise it on the platform. Often clients would receive checks and funds outside the platform which meant that they reached the goal but not necessarily on Indiegogo.

Over the years, I had a smaller number of clients who raised more than $20,000. I had a documentary filmmaker raise $25,000. I had a client making a short documentary who set out to raise $15,000 and raised $30,000 instead. I had a client raise $38,000 a few years ago, and that same client is running another campaign as I write this today. They are at 72% of a $50,000 goal with 5 days to go. Additionally, they received an email last week that said: “We saw your crowdfunding campaign, and we think you need $100,000 to finish your film, so we’re sending you a check for that amount.” WOW!

I often say that the value of crowdfunding campaigns lies far beyond the money landing in the bank. Although, let’s be clear, the money landing in the bank is a fantastic benefit! But the campaign can have far more implications than just building up the bank account.

First, it’s a great way to market your film. The people who give to your crowdfunding campaign are your core audience. This may be a small number of people, but it’s a great start. It takes about 100 people to give in order to raise $10,000 (although in recent years the number of people needed to get to $10,000 is becoming smaller.) With the $50,000 campaign I was just talking about, we will reach about 300 donors by the time the goal is reached.

These 100, 200, 300 people are your “raving fans.” They will be there to support you as you go through production. Once you complete post. And definitely once you launch the film. They may be the ones who show up to the premier. Or who attend live screenings around the country.

When I worked at the YMCA, I was part of a huge piece of research on fundraising that surveyed over 30,000 donors. The takeaway that I most remembered from that project, is that donors who are thanked within 24 to 48 hours of giving their gift are more likely to give more the next time.

This is an incredibly important piece of information. Most filmmakers are reluctant to ask donors to give once, let alone to give a second time, or multiple times. And yet, these core donors. These raving fans, are extremely likely to give again. I’ve had a few clients who have run multiple campaigns for the same film. Some ran a smaller campaign to raise money for marketing and distribution after the film was complete. I’ve had clients run a campaign each year when a film has run into a second year of production. I now have clients raising $50,000 for marketing for a completed film. They raised the money to make the film through investors, and are raising a separate budget just for marketing. VERY SMART!!!!

Over the years I have had a small number of clients raise more than the $20,000 or $25,000 minimum I suggest for a feature: one - who had a pretty large network, raised $38,000. One who was making an animated feature raised $51,000. And two raised $67,000. Not sure why that unusual number should have shown up twice in two very different campaigns: one for a horror film and one for a serious documentary.

But one of the most important strategies I teach my clients is to avoid picking too high a number for their campaigns. People who don’t know the first thing about filmmaking can smell it when a campaign is going to fail. I once received an email from a stranger who asked me to give to her campaign. (First error. Why are you randomly asking strangers to donate?) For some reason I opened the link, her campaign showed $50 raised for a $500,000 campaign. I decided to reply to her email and all I said was: “This campaign cannot work.” She wrote back: “How do you know?”