WGBH joins small producers asking public for production funds
While waiting around for large checks to pay for a new doc, WGBH decided: What the heck, why not raise smaller chunks of money on the Internet? (Actually, there’s no evidence anyone said precisely, “What the heck.”)
In some kind of a first, the Boston producers are asking the public to help fund the two-hour Adoption: An American Revolution (working title). They launched a fundraising website last week at adoptionfilm.org.
The project was inspired by the book Adoption Nation, by Adam Pertman, a former Boston newspaperman. Eric Stange, who produced The War That Made America with Pittsburgh’s WQED and many programs for WGBH, is senior producer.
Stations routinely go to the public for general support, but only a handful of independent producers solicit small donations to make individual series or programs. Several have raised a crucial $100,000 in seed money that way.
WGBH doesn’t expect to raise Adoption’s whole $1.2 million shortfall on the Web, but it does have the advantage of a large constituency that cares about adoption. One-third of Americans have an adoptee in their immediate families, says Judith Vecchione, executive producer.
The website’s pitch can also refer to a looming deadline: The CPB/PBS Program Challenge Fund has pledged to give $400,000, but only if WGBH raises the rest of the $1.6 million budget by year’s end.
Lisa Cerqueira, senior publicist in interactive marketing for WGBH, plans to publicize the project through 150 or more websites of adoption-related organizations, as well as in the general press.
She also expects to buy narrowly targeted and often affordable little text ads that Google and Yahoo put on their search-engine sites. Such ads might appear only when people do searches on word combinations such as “adoption” and “television,” for example, and WGBH would pay only when someone clicks on the ad for more information. The station may also place ads on blogs through Blogads.com, Cerqueira says.
For Cerqueira, who usually works to attract audiences, this is a first assignment to raise production money.
A number of smaller independent producers have longer experience soliciting from the public:
- Kingdom County Productions, based in rural Barnet, Vt., raised about $100,000 of the $275,000 budget for initial episodes of its comedy series Windy Acres, according to producer Lauren Moye. They raised most face-to-face and through mailings. American Public Television is offering the series to stations.
- Simple Living with Wanda Urbanska, another pubTV series, similarly got its start with small-scale hometown fundraising — in this case, Mount Airy, N.C., where Urbanska and her husband are active in civic groups. Small donations, typically $100 each, brought in about $150,000, or 10 percent of startup costs, Urbanska says.
- In the Life, pubTV’s monthly gay/lesbian newsmag, earns about $100,000 a year, or 7 percent of its budget, from memberships and small donations, says Brian Dean, executive director. Small donors also helped raise $500,000 in a recent capital drive to outfit a new studio and offices in Manhattan.
- Living on Earth, pubradio’s environmental newsmag, earns less than 7 percent of its budget from small donors, but Michelle Kweder, deputy director, hopes to nab new supporters when they visit the show’s website to set up podcasts. The site already suggests monthly donations of $5 to $200.
- Independent radio producer David Isay’s nonprofit, Sound Portraits Productions, also raises some funds online. The company’s website lists what the producers can do with tax-deductible donations such as $100 (it buys a set of headphones) to $10,000 (it funds a year’s internship effort).
Web page posted March 4, 2008
Copyright 2005 by Current LLC
