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Animals in the Great War eBook – a Sustainable Funding Case Study

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In March of 2019 we were fortunate enough to interview Maria Grazia Suriano, the researcher and writer of the eBook ‘Animals in the Great War’ for our Sustainable Funding Series for Media, Educators, Technologists, and Creators. Animals in the Great War is an open educational eBook designed to investigate the World War I and study its history from the standpoint of the animals that took part in it. In addition to the eBook, due to both necessity in crowdfunding this project and in observing what students responded, a number of digital photo and video storytelling pieces have been developed to compliment the eBook and engage students in this history in a manner that mirrors their storytelling preferences and that they respond with interest to. The target audience for the Animals in the Great War eBook are educators, history teachers, and students of history (high school aged and older). Below, we share that interview with insights into the Sustainable Funding Model that Maria and her team at Associazione Culturale Se utilized in funding the Animals in the Great War eBook, what Maria learned about crowdfunding, and how she will apply what she’s learned to future projects. Maria and I also discuss digital storytelling, teaching empathy, othering, breaking down borders, open education, and the Animals in the Great War eBook itself. Some of what we discuss here, Maria and her team at Associazione Culturale Se have gone on to apply to other projects, including her eBook ‘Percorrere la nonviolenza‘.

I’d like to be part of this different economy, this social economy. …. This is important. I don’t know how this could work in this all very capitalist world, but maybe this social economy could save us.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War

Creators: Maria Grazia Suriano and Associazione Culturale Se

Country: Italy

Interview Date: March 28, 2019

Link to the Project: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323612634_Animals_in_the_Great_War

Funding Method: Crowdfunding, Matching Funds Grant, Blood-Sweat-&-Tears

Interview with Animals in the Great War eBook Writer Maria Grazia Suriano

The Project : Animals in the Great War eBook

Animals in the Great War is a free eBook designed to explore the history of the Great War (World War I) through the stories of the animals from many different countries that partook in World War I – challenging the concept of borders, exploring othering, and instilling empathy.

This project, aimed at secondary school students and teachers, is designed to get young adults interested in learning about the history of the Great War (World War I) through the stories of animals. Stories like those of the pigeons in espionage, that cannot help but intrigue.

By learning about the war through the stories and perspectives of animals, it is hoped that it will encourage students to think critically about history, the construct of borders and othering, as well as instil empathy.

In the research, crowdfunding, and speaking on this project, it was recognized that it was not only the stories of animals in the war that were engaging students in this history education project, but the photo and video storytelling pieces shared in talks on and in the crowdfunding campaign. As such, stories within the eBook have been modified into smaller, more easily accessible storytelling pieces and shared via the Associazione Culturale Se’s blog:

Case Studies from Animals in the Great War

The Creators : Storytellers behind the Animals in the Great War eBook

The eBook ‘Animals in the Great War’ was researched and written by Maria Grazia Suriano, the co-founder of Associazione Culturale Se. Her colleague at Associazione Culturale Se helped with sourcing the images in the book and editing the book. A translator also worked with them to translate the book into English from Italian.

Maria Grazia Suriano is an independent historian, specialized on European history with a focus on identities, cultures, borders and ways to cross them.

In 2016 Maria cofounded Associazione Culturale Se, a non-profit organization with the aim of spreading inclusive knowledge and enhancing the subordinate subjectivities often excluded from institutional narratives. The Associazione Culturale Se’s focus with this is on promoting history education from the twentieth century, revolving around themes of desire,  empathy,  possibilities, responsibility, affectivity, differences, diversity, and solidarity. In doing this they offer courses and workshops in history education, and create educational history resources for use in the classroom, like the eBook Animals in the Great War and the accompanying Case Studies on their website. The organization’s funding plan is based on public financing, but as this is scarce the organization offsets its financing by offering editorial services, and Maria offsets her income as a copyeditor, yoga teacher, and translator.

Road to Funding Sustainably

As mentioned above, the Associazione Culturale Se in the past has looked to public funding to finance their projects. In the case of the Animals in the Great War eBook, however, they embarked on a new funding journey by entering their eBook into a funding competition with the Europeana Foundation. The competition, Strike a Match for Education was a Matching Fund, designed to encourage co-investment between public and private institutions and the crowd. In this case, for each 1 EUR donated by the crowd, Europeana contributed 1 EUR up to a maximum of 100 EUR per donation and no more than 3,500 EUR per project, once the campaign achieved its minimum crowdfunding goals. To apply, the project had to be digital, use Europeana openly licensed content as a central element and be relevant to a secondary education audience (students 11-18 years and teachers).  Europeana was also looking for scalable and present ideas that would work across multiple countries and/or languages.

Three projects, including the Animals in the Great War eBook were approved for matching funds, and then entered into a crowdfunding campaign to raise the public portion of the funding on Goteo.

What is Goteo?

Goteo is a crowdfunding platform based in Spain which focuses on projects that generate a collective return through promoting the commons, open source code and / or free knowledge, creating as they call it, a social economy. They’ve coined themselves as the open source crowdfunding platform.

Some of the distinctive features of Goteo are:

  • its requirements of openness for the projects, which need to contribute to free culture or the commons in some manner;
  • enabling participants to contribute as volunteers for the projects, in addition to with money;
  • it is run solely by a non-profit foundation, the Spanish Goteo Foundation, enabling tax deductions for donations;
  • its code is free/open source and it has an open API; and
  • it enables other sources of income for projects by partnering with public and private institutions to run match funding competition and allowing successful projects to carry out a second campaign round to raise more funds.

Lessons in Crowdfunding

For Maria and her team at the Associazione Culturale Se this was their first crowdfunding experience, and they realized they were wholly unprepared for it.

It’s naive to approach crowdfunding without a network and digital strategist / strategy. You need to be prepared. A good idea is important, but it’s not enough to be successful in this social economy.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War

With hard work and creativity, the Associazione Culturale Se were able to meet their minimum goal of 3,000 Euros with the matching funds from Europeana, which covered the cost of the eBook being translated into English from Italian. To help in reaching this goal, they utilized creative commons photographs from World War I and created video shorts with those images on the service of various animals in the war.

Maria and her team learned a lot about crowdfunding in the process, including:

  • that their project needed someone with experience in digital strategy, storytelling, and crowdfunding;
  • that (at the time of their campaign at least) crowdfunding is better suited to an international project and team, as the concept of crowdfunding was all very new to the Italian public; and
  • you need to be prepared and have a plan, as a good idea is not enough.

This also broadened their horizons on the potential of digital storytelling in education, in recognizing how their youth audience was drawn to the photo and video storytelling pieces they created as a part of the crowdfunding campaign. These digital storytelling pieces drew the young people into wanting to discover more about history, and ultimately got them questioning borders and thinking empathetically about those impacted by war.

Other Funding Streams

The Associazione Culturale Se had hoped to gain the support of an animal organization in the campaign, but unfortunately were not able to garner this. Maria suspects this was because they were too small as they had not begun to build an audience before the start of the campaign.

Future Building

While not as successful with funding the Animals in the Great War as they would have liked, Maria and the Associazione Culturale Se did learn a lot, and found that the idea of becoming a part of a social economy really resonated with their sensibilities. This is something they wish to explore more on future projects and even crowdfund again. Just next time they will be better prepared by approaching crowdfunding with an international project, with an international partner, a plan in place, and someone with digital strategy, storytelling, and crowdfunding experience to take the lead on that aspect of the project. They also learned that a book is not enough, and want to delve into other mediums and forms of storytelling to engage the students in history.

As they further grow a social economy around their project, they’d love to see companies with similar values to theirs be a part of making their work sustainable through sponsorship.

Culture Has to be Free

One of the fundamental believes of Maria’s and the Associazione Culturale Se’s is that culture needs to be free to make information accessible. One of biggest problems that teachers face is that they don’t have the money to buy the resources that they need. This problem does not solely sit with educators though, but also with learners. Many people don’t have the possibility to continue with their formal education after public schooling, making it important that they have something to think on, something different than a school book.

It’s important. Culture has to be free … at all levels, because many people have no possibility to continue after school. It’s important that they have something to think on … something different than a school book.

~ Maria Grazia Suriano, Writer of Animals in the Great War
Have a question for Maria? Ask it in the comments below, and we shall see if we can get you an answer.

A enormous thank you to BCIT for sponsoring this case study, to Grant for the Web for funding the broader Sustainable Funding Series, to the AMTEC Trust Award and CNIE for funding my professional development work around this work, and to David Porter for acting as an advisor to me in this work.

Crowdfunding – Creating New Possibilities and Sidestepping Gatekeepers

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This article was originally published in Reel West Magazine, and was republished here to archive it, after the close of the magazine.

Whether you laughed or exclaimed “WTF!” that a dude jokingly posts “I’m making potato salad. Basically I’m just making potato salad. I haven’t decided what kind yet.” on Kickstarter and he raises $55,492, it does make you sit up a little straighter and think maybe, just maybe, you should be paying crowdfunding a little more attention.  What was Zack Danger Brown’s intention with his potato salad Kickstarter campaign, aside from a good chuckle?  He’d publicly hoped to raise $10, while secretly his goal was $60.  Never in his wildest dreams did he expect to raise $55,492.  Who would?!?

As a creator, this excites me.  Whether you’ve long been a fan of crowdfunding or have been skeptically watching from the sidelines, this past year has carried some telling examples with it for us creators. Examples that suggest crowdfunding may indeed be a viable alternative to play with in the Canadian film and TV funding game, opening the playing field up to those creators who are willing to put in the work to experiment with a new model of funding, sidestepping traditional gatekeepers.

After all, it is not just potato salad that is getting funded. 2013 saw a revival of the Veronica Mars stories, as after 7 years of being off network television, Director Rob Thomas, in a last ditch attempt to raise financing for the film started a Kickstarter campaign.  He admittedly was skeptical if it would work.  You see he needed $2 million to go to camera, and at that time the highest raising Kickstarter campaign had been $900,000.  It would seem Rob need not have worried. He raised the first $1 million in the first 4 hours!  By 12 hours in, he’d raised the $2 million that he needed to shoot. The campaign continued on to raise a total of $5,702,153 from 91,585 backers, unlocking a variety of the campaign’s stretch goals.

Many pondered whether this was just a one time phenomenon, but since then Reading Rainbow has been revived too, thanks to a Kickstarter campaign raising $5,408,916 (it’s goal was $1 million).  Then this summer Coolest Cooler took over the torch of Kickstarter’s highest raising campaign yet raising $13,285,226, while it’s goal was only $50,000.

I hear a few mutters of “Well … those are big American entities, with pre-existing fan bases.”  True enough, at least in the case of Veronica Mars and Reading Rainbow, but our Canadian creators’ campaigns are nothing to scoff at.  Take for example Indie Game: the Movie, by Manitoba filmmakers James Swirsky and Lisanne Pajot – with two Kickstarter campaigns they raised $94,676 for the documentary.  Their goal had been $50,000.  They most certainly considered this a success, and in the process they had inadvertently marketed their documentary, creating a fan base and anticipation for it’s release. Win – Win!

Interviews with Canadian Creatives on Crowdfunding

In interviewing a number of other Canadian creatives who have successfully crowdfunded their own projects, here is what they learned in the process:

Steve Dotto

Past: Radio and TV Producer & Host, Now: YouTube Publisher

The Campaign: 

After spending many years on network TV, I moved my product to YouTube. When I was in traditional television, my customer was the sponsor, my customer now, is my viewer, the purpose of a crowdfunding campaign is to create a direct connection between the viewer and content creator. Ideally I was looking to recapture some revenue, from my community. I have nearly 40,000 subscribers to my YouTube channel, a small contribution from each one would make for very healthy income. Community support allows me to create more compelling content that isn’t focused on pleasing advertisers instead of viewers.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

The crowdfuding platform I am currently using is called Patreon (patreon.com/dottotech), It was designed to bring audiences and content creators together. By becoming a patron, an individual can choose to support an individual content creator, musician, artist, writer, or in my case YouTube Publisher. Crowdfunding closes the gap, and removes the middle man, so you don’t have to deal with networks or other publishers in order to reach your audience.

Patreon is one of the first on the market offering this sort of service. I think it is an outstanding option for any content creator. One caveat is YouTube is looking at offering similar services, and if they get into the game it could make for a compelling option.

Advice:

First, mature the product you are offering to the community. I think it is important to establish your brand and offer before asking people to invest in you.

Also I “primed the pump”. I did a small private campaign to get some activity in my account before asking the general public to support me. I think if people visit any online product and hear crickets, you will have a difficult time converting them into supporters.

Sarah Keenleyside

Inkblot Media (& Joseph Clement, Producer / Director of Auratic Media)

The Campaign:

I am helping produce a documentary about Integral House, one of the most architecturally significant homes in North America – and its owner Jim Stewart, who is the world’s most published calculus mathematicians. The house is remarkable, not only because of its stunning architecture by Shim Sutcliffe Architects, but also because it functions as a concert space and has hosted such celebrated musicians as Phillip Glass, Misha Breuggergosman and The New Orford Quartet.

After hitting a few frustrating dead ends while pursuing traditional financing, we quickly decided to fundraise the budget ourselves offering experiences within the house (concerts, an art event) as rewards for interested investors. So far Joseph has successfully hosted three events in the house, the proceeds of which have kept the production afloat.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

We used none. Instead, Joseph created a site for the film where people could purchase tickets: auraticmedia.com/tickets. So far, all of the events have been well attended through word of mouth, but we will be doing a final, major concert or event in the house to complete our production funding, and then we’re hoping to go back to the traditional sources to help us finish it off. 

Advice:

I think it’s important to ask yourself, why should people care about your project? What are investors getting out of the investment? Even $5 and the time it takes to donate $5 is a big ask based solely on your word that they will enjoy the film when it’s finished. 

I think our campaign is highly unusual, because we can offer such desirable rewards, and because the rewards are so connected to the film itself. In a way, we didn’t need to prove that the film will be good – visiting the house is reward enough! 

But I have given money to many campaigns in the past, and looking back, they all drew me in for very specific reasons – i.e. I was familiar with the person/people behind the campaign and I admired their previous work; I cared about the cause or subject matter featured in the film; I was curious about the subject matter; I liked their technical approach and wanted to see it realized; or the rewards were just so rewarding that I couldn’t resist (in most cases, the reward was a book that was being presold).

Daniel Baylis

Writer and Adventurer (and Digital Editor at Air Canada’s enRoute Magazine)

The Campaign:

A couple years ago, I turned 30 years old and decided to mark the occasion by travelling around the world for an entire year. The objective of my travels was not simply to drift, but to find meaningful ways to engage with the communities I visited. In some cases I succeeded. In other cases I did not. Upon returning to Canada, I began the process of writing a memoir about my journey. I decided to independently release this book, and crowdfunding became an integral (and obvious) step in the process of sharing my story with the world. 

Now, you can see the book at thetraveller.ca: The Traveller: Notes from an Imperfect Journey Around the World.

Crowdfunding Platform of Choice:

I used Indiegogo and would absolutely use the platform again. They’ve got a support team in place that was responsive to any concerns. In fact, they provided unsolicited coaching tips that proved vital in my campaign. For example, I hit my $5000 goal within three days and Stephan from the service team encouraged me to set “stretch goals” to communicate how I could take my project further with more funding.

Advice:

Don’t rush into it. Take the time to plan out your attack, communicate your goal clearly and then make a stellar video.

Kemp Edmonds

Part-Time Filmmaker Kemp Edmonds (cbc.ca/player/Shows/ID/2303020192) advices that “its like politics: for success you need to ask anyone who you can to take part. You need to sell yourself and your campaign 24/7 to ensure success. Also build partnerships and have others feature what you are doing. Think PR. Think unique hook. Why does your story matter to the greater audience? How can you get a newspaper or radio reporter to jump on the story? Then use every social media channel you can you reach, engage and converse with folks, especially those with places to amplify your message, about your campaign.”

Doreen Pendgracs

And novelist Doreen Pendgracs (doreenpendgracs.com/?s=crowdfunding) suggests you study the algorithm of the crowdfunding platform you are on, so that you benefit from their help in marketing your campaign.  She also advices you keep the video that you are using to promote your campaign short.  She created one 8-minute video, that should have been two shorter videos.

Final Words

Just remember, don’t become greedy with your crowdfunding campaign, but do be realistic in your budgeting. Make sure that you are not overselling and can deliver what you are promising.

When you start your crowdfunding campaign, do be sure to tell us by tweeting us at @AhimsaMedia and / or using the #StoryToGo hashtag.  We love seeing what our Canadian creatives are up to!