Livestream Experiment Yields Rich Rewards

Film2Future’s first-ever virtual gala smashed all prior fundraising records, tripled attendance records, and launched a whole new way of celebrating our students, increasing awareness and raising money. In a year when there are so many causes to support, it’s critical to utilize livestream technology to overcome the distance between non-profits and potential donors. Not only is there incredible fundraising potential, there’s also an opportunity to be creative and reach audiences beyond the mailing list. In the interest of illuminating the path for others, here’s our story.

For the last four years, Film2Future followed the traditional path of non-profits. Calendar one main event for the year to celebrate our students, recruit new supporters and try to raise money. Our gala event borrowed from a graduation ceremony, included the premieres of our student films, a few on point guest speakers with as much profile as possible, and an attempt to raise money around this. We bounced around from location to location from year to year but never really figured out how to turn it into a real fundraiser.

Like most other non-profits, Film2Future has limited staff and resources, and functions through the volunteer contributions of its Board and a whole lot of others. The organization’s founder Rachel Miller juggles Film2Future with her full-time job as a partner at Haven Entertainment. The program’s main focus has been educating underserved diverse teenagers in the how to’s of creating stories and preparing them for entry level jobs in entertainment or college. For the first four years, pretty much every penny raised went to student-driven expenses.  

As 2020’s celebrity of the year COVID wrapped its evil infectiousness all over everything, Film2Future pivoted from three-week in-person program to a virtual program that included delivering tech pods to our students. The tech pods contained a new laptop loaded with professional software for creatives, headphones, a comfortable chair and we even sent the students a box of fresh fruit and vegetables each week. We had a plan for keeping the program running, but had to develop a plan for the gala/graduation.

Early into COVID, I had been dabbling with virtual events with the AMP Music Summit. It was part of the answer to a question to myself: What do you want to do in COVID? Pre-COVID, a few years back, I had produced the biggest music festival in N. America (EDC aka Electric Daisy Carnival) and then I moved into consulting for independent festivals and promoters. My focus was live entertainment. COVID shattered my industry. As many others have said, it was the first to close and will be the last to return. 

After the first AMP Music Summit, I became an instant believer in the power of virtual events to bring people together in new ways. While many real world festivals are following a formula now, the possibilities of developing new creative combinations, uniting people from all over the globe, and doing it all in a way that had not been done. And—creating a place where people can attend from all over, participate from all over…there is SO MUCH POSSIBILITY, especially in music where the gap to an incredible NFL Super Bowl style broadcast has been so elusive.

Our first AMP Music Summit was a direct response to COVID. My co-founders and I wanted to do something. We decided to bring people together for this discussion and share information. We wanted to help. We wanted to bring people in the industry together, focus on people who had discovered solutions and found new opportunity. We wanted to find the good news and share it. Over 1,000 people registered with zero dollars spent on marketing. We had speakers from Fortune 500 companies, big companies and independents. When it was all said and done, we earned press in Billboard and other publications. 

For the second Summit a few months later, we focused on racial justice and migration—specifically looking at where people were moving outside of major cities and what they were building there. We decided to offer a pay what you want model that included a free option. Again, we wanted to help people in the industry who had lost jobs but also give people who were still earning the opportunity to support our new endeavor. Again, it worked. We had less registrations (probably due to announcing late and spending zero marketing dollars) but still had great attendance from all over the United States. We had great conversations and the feedback was all positive. We will continue with one in January.  www.AMPmusicsummit.com if you want to visit.

One of the places where virtual events have proven to shine is for fundraising. All year long, virtual shows of all stripes have raised millions of dollars for charitable causes. I have been preaching about their effectiveness for most of the year. In this year, artists like Lil Nas X and Travis Scott set audience records (33 million and 45.8 million respectively), and many artists have responded to the call to help independent venues and small businesses, as well as raising awareness and funds to support racial justice causes and COVID-response.

“Every time someone suggests doing a virtual event to raise, my eyes roll.” This is what a Facebook friend replied to my suggestion to the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s marketing director. Better trying something than doing nothing at all and watching it all fall apart. I believe in fighting to keep good things going.

I volunteered to produce the Film2Future graduation gala because I wanted to prove a point. Film2Future has never been able to raise money with this event. I wanted to show that we could raise money this way. I acknowledge that racial justice and inequity grabbed a headlining main stage slot this year with Black Lives Matter and the uninterrupted coverage of the dominating whiteness of Hollywood. Film2Future’s mission falls into this area, creating opportunities for diverse students from low income families, and the gala no doubt benefited from the increased urgency on the topic.

But normally, getting anyone to attend a gala…well, there’s a lot of them out there. We all do our best to support the causes we cherish, but speaking for myself, there are plenty of causes I am more happy to support from a distance. In most instances, I would prefer that the non-profits I support (i) do not spend money for me on bad food and a mediocre experience and (ii) do not send me any emails or mailings. When I want to give, I do. I pay attention to the causes I want to support.

Virtual events a perfect way to get almost all of the benefits of a fundraising event without so many of the associated costs and hassles. Video production costs swap for venue rental fees or other typical event costs. After that, a non-profit can make any choice it likes in how much more it chooses to spend. Some causes are offering deliveries of dinner baskets and cocktails during their virtual events. And just like the pre-COVID offerings, donation incentives can go as big as anyone wants. 

I hired Bulldog Digital Media to handle the technical production of the event, and we had a great deal of pre-production support from Framework Studio. Framework’s CEO & Executive Producer Raj Patel is on the Film2Future board and he brought his team to bear on the graphic design, on-screen text overlays, video animations, title cards and slide show. 

Bulldog’s CEO, John Petrocelli, has been producing livestreams since their inception. He’s built livestreams for companies that have turned into significant revenue streams driven by sponsors, as well as expanding audiences beyond the people at a festival. He also is the first guy to call when you need to do some livestreaming. Bulldog has produced livestreams for Fortune 500 Companies and most recently partnered with NIVA (National Independent Association) and powered their Save Our Stages livestream fundraiser that featured top-tier talent playing at multiple venues. 

Due to our budget restrictions and lack of fundraising history for this event, Zoom was the default platform. I knew full well that the quality of the experience would suffer a bit, and that the music performances would sound…less than optimal. What Zoom lacks in terms of guaranteed broadcast quality, it does offer ease of use. No one really has to learn it at this point.

I reverted to Eventbrite for ticketing, mainly because I already had an account. The platform works fine and has virtual event integrations but they haven’t figured out a reduced fee structure for non-profits. If the platform does not make an adjustment there, I will choose an alternative on the next one. This time I did not want to go study a bunch of alternatives, I wanted to get the gala on sale as quickly as possible on a platform with no learning curve.

On October 17, about 30 days before our gala on November 19, 2020, the Eventbrite ticketing page was live and made the announcement through our socials and socials. Other than an allocation of free tickets for students and their friends, tickets ranged from $40 to $5,000. I wanted to further test my theory that people will pay more without any real incentive to do so. I wanted to give people a chance to support at the highest level they could.

My first goal for the programming of the event was to honor the students and celebrate their achievements. My second goal was a two-parter—raise awareness and raise money. The only real rule was to always put the student experience first in every decision around the programming.

Getting talent to say yes to participating in our event became easier. No one had to drive anywhere. Andy Allo, one of the lead actresses from Upload (and formerly Prince’s band), made a quick commitment to host. Joseph Lucero, an actor from Mayans M.C., agreed to do a spoken word performance, and he also recruited the cast of the Mayans to pre-record video introductions to our student short films.

I’ll spare the logistical details, but to make a long story short, a few more interesting folks said yes to participating, including writer producer LaToya Morgan who we honored with our annual Changemaker Award.

Here are the interesting things that happened as we reached the date of the event. Some board members engaged in a much bigger way than they ever had—reaching out to potential donors with confidence. Inviting people to either buy a ticket to the gala and, at their discretion, attend offered a very easy way for people to support Film2Future and learn about our programming—even if they didn’t attend. As every non-profit leader knows, board engagement is critical to successful fundraising. 

We added a Film2Future alumni as a musical guest – his mariachi band Mariachi Voz Juvenil played songs at the beginning and the end. Sahr Nguaja agreed to give a brief talk and reprise his Broadway performance of song from Moulin Rouge.

As much as I wanted everything to be live live, I had to make accommodations for the music performances and a handful of other things. The other content pre-recorded content included a Film2Future 2020 documentary and five student created short films.

It’s easier to push play on a series of pre-recorded content. For me, coming from live events, I have a reverence for the irreplaceable magic to the connection between people in a live setting. Every time I had to revert to a pre-recorded segment, I felt that connection fade a little bit. That said, everyone watches TV and the highest production value content is usually pre-recorded (with the exception of sports and the news). Whenever I was in doubt, I just went back to the question: Will this make the show better for the students? If the answer was yes, I got over my preferences.

Like everything on Zoom, the gala itself experienced a few quirks. It was not perfect, but it was good enough. We shared our mission, visited with some students, premiered their short films and talked about the future. We had about 300 households tune into the show. I say households because each ticket gave access to a screen. In many instances, more than one person watched the screens. My best guess is 1,000 people watched. The feedback was universally positive. It will get better next time.

Now here’s what is most important. The data. I’m sharing all of this because I hope to inspire other organizations, for profit and non-profit, to experiment with livestreaming. It’s fun to program a show, but it is also impactful. When it’s over, you have a video recording of the whole thing you can use for promotion and other purposes.

We achieved our primary goal. Film2Future’s students enjoyed the program and felt celebrated. Their families and friends all got to see the show—even if they weren’t in Los Angeles.

And now on to the second goal, raising awareness and raising money. I am happy to report that we also achieved the second goal, and at a level far greater than anyone anticipated in the beginning.

Tickets were purchased from people in cities across the United States as well as New Zealand, Australia, South America, Central America and Eastern Europe.

Total fundraising for the event reached about $85,000 through corporate partnerships. Our total expenses landed around $10,000. Our net lands around $75,000.

Remember, this is an event that had never raised any money in real life. We turned a breakeven show into a major fundraiser. We got the event and the organization in front of almost ten thousand people. 

We learned a lot of lessons. Our marketing could improve which would probably drive higher fundraising and awareness. Next time, knowing what is possible, we’ll invest in higher production value in pursuit of raising even more money.