Making culture happen! Affinity Collective raised more than $15,000 to support their European tour thanks to more than 70 supporters who backed their first ever ACF campaign. We spoke with Affinity Collective founder, Mee Na Lojewski to get her tips on using events as part of your campaign strategy.
Tell us a bit about how you incorporated events into your fundraising strategy.
We promoted Affinity Collective’s ACF campaign giving four concerts spaced over the campaign period – two were private concerts in the homes of supporters, one was at a regional church as part of a local centenary celebration, and one was a large public farewell concert. At each of these events I gave spoken introductions and distributed flyers with information about our project and our ACF campaign.
What was the most effective approach you used, and why do you think it was so successful?
The combination and intensity of a range of fundraising efforts over 65 days was vital in promoting our campaign: email, social media, printed flyers, fundraising events and public concerts. I sent a few hundred letters to friends and supporters about our project inviting them to donate. I made regular posts on Facebook and Affinity Collective’s website about our tour developments, the campaign and our promotion events.
What, if anything, would you do different?
Next time I would plan a longer campaign to enable more scope for promoting the campaign.
Did this experience improve your understanding of your supporters and how you communicate to them? Can you share some insights with us?
We learnt the importance of maintaining regular personal communication with our supporters. Most of our supporters were our concert audiences and people who knew us or our families personally. I wrote personal thank you messages to everyone who donated, kept in touch with them about our project’s development and invited them to hear performances of our work in progress.
And finally – what advice would you give to other artists looking to use events as part of their fundraising strategy?
Plan events early. To maximise the success of promotion events it’s important to invite people who are likely to be interested in your event. We were extremely lucky to have supporters who agreed to host our promotion concerts in their homes. The warm, informal social settings of these events generated further support for our campaign and also expanded Affinity Collective’s following.
More about Affinity Collective
A flexible ensemble of ANAM students and alumni, Affinity Collective represents the next generation of Australian music making. With one successful campaign under their belt they have proved their fundraising know-how. You can follow Affinity Collective’s performances and check out news from their March – April 2016 tour online.
We’ll be following up with Affinity Collective post tour to share some of their tour highlights and share more fundraising tips, so stay tuned!