Fundraising

For those of you who follow my blog, you will already know about my struggle to get my memoir published.

Last month, I received an offer of publication from Black Dog. However the publisher can only provide half of the funding, and if I am to take up their offer, I will need to match their contribution. Now this is the challenge! My question is this: how do you fundraise for such a project? Do you know ways to do so? I would be interested to hear your opinions. Please do contact me either through my blog or email me via  my website with your thoughts. I know I will need to find ways of connecting with the right people if I am to make my dream a reality.

Yesterday I had a fundraising advice session with Dipak Natali, a very experienced marketing and fundraising specialist, who has achieved some amazing feats in delivering results for his clients. We discussed my project and the options available to me.

Crowd funding is one of the options he suggested. However, my network is very small and I feel I don't have enough support to succeed there. I do know a New York based artist, Dread Scott, who exceeded his expectations in funding an exhibition of his work through a Kickstarter campaign, but he already had a lot of followers for his campaign before it was even launched, and has a much higher public profile than I do.

Because my project is a 'niche' project – ie it does not fit neatly into just one category – the options of funding it by institutional organizations are very slim. Besides which, few will back individuals. A quick glance through 'The Fundraisers Handbook', distributed by The Directory of Social Change, confirms this.

Therefore, it seems to come down to finding philanthropic individuals who might be interested in my project and making a case for their support. That would be extremely difficult and something I am not keen to pursue. As you can see, the options are rather limited.

Of course, the ultimate solution is to find a publisher who will meet all the costs of publication, and then my problem would be solved. But until then, I'm having to do some lateral thinking and who knows where that will lead? The manuscript meanwhile awaits further editing, until when I have the time to work on it without the pressure of fundraising to get it published. At the moment, there seems no end in sight...