Jennifer Fox Raises $150,000 for “My Reincarnation” on Kickstarter
After raising $154,456 via the crowd-funding website Kickstarter, Jennifer Fox’s spiritual documentary “My Reincarnation” became the top-raising finished film in the platform’s history and their fourth highest earning film project at any production phase.
The film, which chronicles a High Tibetan Buddhist teacher and his Western-born son’s tenuous relationship, was completed a number of years ago. After a co-producing partner was unable to contribute a reportedly promised $100,000 portion of the budget, Fox turned to Kickstarter to solve her financial dilemma.
For the uninitiated, Kickstarter offers artists a platform to solicit donations for specific projects. If a project doesn’t raise its financial goal by the end of its allotted time frame, all donations are refunded. According to Zohe Films, only 43% of campaigns succeed.
So, how did Fox do it? By tapping into spiritual, religious and film communities worldwide using an extensive web outreach campaign that incorporated social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
“Announcing to all the world on the Internet that my film had a deficit was the most naked thing I have ever done,” Fox said in a statement. “In the past, I always approached fundraising as a private hush-hush event. Going public really shook up my egotistical concepts of who I was as a person. I started to reflect on that in my blog posts in a way that related to the film’s spiritual content.”
After hitting their $50,000 goal 46 days into the campaign, Fox and her team set a new target of $100,000. By the time their new deadline rolled around on May 28th, the film had raised $150,456 from 518 backers, 300% more than their original goal.
To find out more about “My Reincarnation” check out the film’s website.
