Crains New York - August 20, 2012 - (Page 22)

The rise of crowdfunding Continued from Page 21 SOURCE LUNCH: BETSY MORGAN by Matthew Flamm weeks ago, he started a monthlong campaign and generated half the money within the first three days. Over the past few years, crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo have become increasingly popular among small theater groups that have had little access to mainstream donors or, in the case of Mr. Bowen and his team, disagreements with their backers. Some say crowdfunding may alter the theater scene permanently, enabling smaller, more experimental shows to be produced, with dozens of backers involved in the process. starter for The Magical History Tour: Theater! On a Boat! With Pirates! The musical recounts the adventures of legendary pirates; it raised enough money for several performances on a 158-foot-long tall ship as it sailed around New York Harbor. There are different guidelines for joining Kickstarter and Indiegogo, but both insist artists establish financial goals and time frames within which to achieve them. Social media is the key to success. Social media is key The Phantom Limb Company raised $46,022 for 69S, a piece about the early 20th-century explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to Antarctica.The show married experimental aesthetics with environmental themes. Creators of the musical The Groove Factory, centering on the demise of the club scene at the turn of the 21st century, raised $10,251 on Indiegogo. Similarly, Ping Chong & Company also generated $23,065 on Indiegogo to fund the filming of Secret Survivors, written and performed by adult survivors of sexual abuse. At the opposite end of the aesthetic spectrum, the Floating Theater rolled up $20,811 on Kick- ‘Each campaign is almost like a narrative in itself’ “This turned out to be a fulltime job,” said Jessica Grindstaff, artistic director of the Phantom Limb Company. “Every time someone made a contribution, I’d go to their Facebook page and thank them and add a link to my Kickstarter page. Then their friends would see it and could link to our page.” Mr.Bowen said social media has a “Saturning” effect.“Your fan contributes, and so does his mother.” These investors may then become new theatergoers. Now. Here. This. boasted 488 angels on day five of its campaign. It helps if the artists have track records or their projects have already generated some buzz. The Groove Factory has been in development for 10 years and was recently accepted as part of the highly competitive New York Musical Theatre Festival,often a precursor to a commercial run. Still, for co-writer Chad Kessler, who has been the primary producer up until this point, going online posed some new conflicts. He needed $45,000 to $50,000 to pay Equity actors and present a high-quality production that might appeal to serious investors at the festival. But he was afraid a $50,000 online campaign would turn off potential contributors who might only have $25 to throw into the pot. He settled on an initial $10,000 campaign. “We felt if we succeeded, we’d ignite the fire for future campaigns,” he said. He hated the public display of his fundraising. “I was afraid [Equity actors would] see we had made $4,000 and decide we couldn’t pay them.” Soliciting money from friends and relatives can be awkward. Mr. Kessler was grateful to his Aunt Harriet, who made a modest contribution, but he felt slightly uncomfortable. Web executive makes a right turn L ast year, former Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan startled media watchers when she signed on as president of another high-profile news site, TheBlaze.com. The 2-year-old site— which draws 3.4 million unique visitors monthly, according to comScore—is part of the conservative media empire that Glenn Beck has been focused on since he left Fox News in 2011 and launched his subscription streaming network,GBTV. Recently,the controversial media star announced he would be dropping the GBTV name and making the network part of The Blaze— signaling its arrival as a stand-alone media brand. cussion.One of the things that was really frustrating for me in my years with CBS was that, as a legacy brand, they were never in a position to take a perspective.We did that at The Huffington Post, and it’s a much more interesting place to start a dialogue than if you never come to any conclusions. The Huffington Post pioneered tech tools that let you track and anticipate reader behavior. Now everybody does that. How do you get an edge? You spent 10 years at CBS and two years at The Huffington Post in its heyday as a liberal site. What made you join a conservative site? A DRAMATIC SECOND ACT FROM THE OUTSET, director Jonathan Solari and producer Sarah Wolff knew they were entering a hornet’s nest in their effort to obtain BedfordStuyvesant’s historic Slave Theatre in Brooklyn, a space on Fulton Street that had fallen into disrepair and is caught in a legal maze—from questions of ownership to a tax lien on the property. The original owner, Judge John C. Phillips, left no will. Many parties, including Judge Phillips’ nephew and executor, the Rev. Samuel Boykin, and the Bank of New York have a stake in it. An auction of the property was slated to take place at Brooklyn Supreme Court on Aug. 9, but with an alleged buyer in the wings, the auction was aborted. Nonetheless, Mr. Solari and Ms. Wolff are determined to purchase the building. They hope to raise a down payment of $200,000 on Kickstarter, and transform the building into the New Brooklyn Theater. Its mission will be to serve local audiences and artists representing a range of aesthetics from the traditional to the avant-garde, “regardless of their medium or previous exposure,” said Mr. Solari. The Kickstarter campaign, launched on Aug. 5, within a week garnered 111 backers who had collectively pledged $17,538. The pair’s initial outreach included social media and personal emails to colleagues and artistic collaborators, but the duo is now casting a wider net, engaging members of the community and organizations that have an interest in seeing the project succeed. George Panagi, a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident, said that when he read about the brouhaha on local real estate websites, he became a backer on Kickstarter. He hopes his modest contribution will help serve as a catalyst to clarify the issues and show his support for a theater, as opposed to condos or some retail establishment, he said. Despite the challenges, including an executor who will no longer answer the director’s calls, Mr. Solari is optimistic about the theater’s future. He talked about buying the building from the Rev. Boykin, “but we will be happy to do business with the Bank of New York if they exercise their right to foreclose on the building.” Looking past that transaction, Mr. Solari is already planning the next fundraising phase, which will include seeking monies from grants and political discretionary funds, among other sources. —SIMI HORWITZ ‘Biggest challenge’ By contrast, Ms. Grindstaff didn’t mind. “I never asked my friends and relatives for anything,” she said. “When I did, they understood how much we needed it.” Mr. Bowen said raising funds on his own has been empowering because it eliminates the middleman, who may not even understand what the show is about. He added, “The biggest challenge is communicating to your fans that what they’re investing in is really good even before it exists. It’s like being a vacuum cleaner salesman without the vacuum cleaner.” In the end, crowdfunding is not unlike a telethon, creating a sense of community among contributors and observers, especially as deadlines loom. “When we had $37,000, people started panicking for us and felt they had to give money so that we’d make our [goal of ] $45,000,” said Ms. Grindstaff. Crowdfunding may make it easier for small theaters in the long run. Sara Zatz, associate director of Ping Chong, said the Ms. Foundation made an additional financial commitment for Secret Survivors, and 272 new contributors can now be tapped for funding endeavors. Some believe crowdfunding will attract young investors, who will change theater’s aesthetic. “Each crowdfunding campaign is almost like a narrative in itself,”said Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo. “There’s a beginning, middle and end, and all the participants are actors in a production.” I’d seen The Huffington Post start left and [evolve] into a big, mainstream site. I thought that Glenn and Chris [Balfe, president of Mr. Beck’s production company, Mercury Radio Arts] also saw an enormous opportunity with an audience that was “undersatisfied” with its media outlets. And it looked like another amazing, fun, adventurous, innovative ride. You’ve said that you’re not a political person. But your husband is a Democrat. What was his reaction? The tools are ubiquitous; the differentiator is how you use them and how much your team is engaged with them. We happen to be a very flat organization where everybody in the newsroom can suggest stories and tell everyone else what’s trending, and because of that THE BAR ROOM empowerment there is AT THE MODERN much more real-time itera9 W. 53rd St. tion of the product and the (212) 333-1220 business. www.themodern WHERE THEY DINED nyc.com AMBIENCE: Elegant, with a spare, informal aesthetic. Lively without being frenetic. Moderate noise level, attentive waitstaff. WHAT THEY ATE: Atlantic cod, arugula and watercress salad, coffee, beignets Arugula and watercress salad, tomato and almond gazpacho, coffee, cheesecake Tab: $139.59, including tip What role does Mr. Beck play at The Blaze? Glenn is the majority owner, but he reads The Blaze like everyone else,and there are stories he loves and stories he doesn’t. He has his own website, it does very well, and it’s appropriately named GlennBeck.com. What’s accomplished by consolidating everything inside The Blaze? He was enormously supportive, and that was very important to me. But anybody who knows me professionally and personally knows that I’m a risktaker, that it’s all about the opportunity to reinvent the [online news] space.I saw a lot of qualities in Glenn that I saw in Arianna [Huffington]. One happened to be on one side of the political spectrum, and the other on the other side. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with the site? It gives us a lot more continuity as a business. There’s subscription-supported content,ad-supported content and e-commerce, and putting all that under one umbrella makes it easier for the consumer and easier for us internally. We feel we’re well on our way to being this disruptive media brand, and we’ve done it in a short time. You’ve more than quintupled the number of sponsors in the past year. Are you worried that the controversial Glenn Beck brand will hurt The Blaze with larger advertisers? What’s most interesting to me about where news and information is going on the Web is that when you take a stand on something and have a point of view, dialogue gets created around that. Most people understand it’s not necessarily everybody’s point of view. But you have a starting point for a dis- Any time you’ve got a specific point of view, whether it’s left, right, blue, green, purple, you’re going to have advertisers who say this will not resonate [with their clients]. Once you reach a certain scale, those issues go away. You didn’t see a lot of oil and gas advertising on The Huffington Post early on; you see a lot of oil and gas advertising there now. INSIDE TIP Try the bar area for a livelier dining experience. 22 | Crain’s New York Business | August 20, 2012 http://www.theBlaze.com http://www.theBlaze.com http://www.themodernnyc.com http://www.GlennBeck.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - August 20, 2012

Crains New York - August 20, 2012
Contents
In the Boroughs
In the Markets
The Insider
Opinion
Alair Townsend
From Around the City
Report: Real Estate
Real Estate Deals
The List: Top Airlines
Classifieds
New York, New York
Source Lunch
Out and About
Snaps

Crains New York - August 20, 2012