Crowdfunding and patronage explained
Happy Hallowe’en! 🎃
Karen, Richard, and Matt are professional relations: business partners who are also family members. This issue, Richard edits his wife Karen’s interview with their son Matt, about crowdfunding – what it is and how Foggy Outline might be thinking of using it.
“Crowdfunding is not shopping”
Karen
We’ve been talking about the option of crowdfunding Season 2 of I Need a Miracle. Can you explain how crowdfunding works?
Matt
The idea behind crowdfunding is that instead of needing to find one person or organisation that can give you money for a project you get that money by asking a large number of people to give you a small amount that adds up to the amount you need for the project. It’s distributing the load or the responsibility. It means that you don’t owe any of the money back. People chip in because they want the project to happen, so people aren’t expecting their money back. It’s not like a bank loan, but you are beholden to the audience for the project.
A separate financing body’s interest is more likely to be in getting their money back rather than making your project happen. Crowdfunding can mean the money comes from the people who want to see the work and enjoy it.
Karen
That’s clear. I’m guessing though, there’s still accountability to the audience in cases where the funds raised aren’t enough for the planned project to happen?
Matt
I should have mentioned that crowdfunding in this way could only happen with the Internet. There’s a few different platforms and usually you’ll say, ‘if we don’t hit this goal the project doesn’t happen’. Those projects don’t collect anybody’s money until the end when the number’s hit. Say we’re raising £12000, and people only pledge 9. Nobody gets charged and the project doesn’t get any money.
But some will also give you the option of a flexible goal where you can say ‘Our goal is £12000, but we’ll collect whatever people have pledged’. I guess in those cases we’d do whatever version of the project we could do for the money that we got, even though it wasn’t as high as we wanted.
Platforms will handle the accountability in different ways. Lots of them say quite explicitly, ‘crowdfunding is not shopping’. When you pledge for a project, you’re not buying a product. You’re pledging to get the thing made and you don’t get your money back if you’re not satisfied. But there are usually checks to stop people stealing everybody’s pledges and not doing what they planned.
“What I’ve been talking about so far is project-based crowdfunding … Patronage is more about supporting the creator”
Karen
I guess it’s linked, but can you also explain patronage and how it differs from crowdfunding?
Matt
Patronage, I guess is kind of crowdfunding for a different purpose. What I’ve been talking about so far is project-based crowdfunding where you say ‘I want to make something. I don’t have the money to make this, please can lots of people chip in so that I can make that specific thing.’
Patronage is a little bit more like ‘can you chip in a little bit to support me as a creator?’ Most people will have heard of Patreon. We use Ko-Fi, another platform which I like because it’s based on the idea of ‘buy me a cuppa’. Lots of people release stuff online for free and people expect to get stuff for free. But it would be nice if the people making them still made some money from the people consuming them or enjoying them. Patronage is a way of chipping in a bit as a one-off or as a monthly or other kind of regular donation. Basically saying, ‘I like the stuff you’re making, and I’d like to support you making more of it and I think you should get paid for it, but there isn’t a way for me to pay specifically for the article or video or podcast episode’.
So, patronage is a little less direct in terms of putting money towards a specific project, it’s more about supporting the creator. I think about it almost like if you’ve got a nice housemate who does all the housework, and you make him a nice meal now and then. It’s not like the cost of 1 housework is 1 cuppa. It’s not like a transaction in that way, it’s just like a way of saying thank you to this person for the thing that they do.
Like the rest of crowdfunding, it could only really happen, in the way that it happens now through the Internet, because you can connect so many people from all over the world to bring together all those little donations. But it’s based on the old model of how art happened which was that a rich landowner or member of the nobility would point at an artist and go, ‘You! I’m going to pay all of your living expenses and a nice bonus on top of that and in return you will create things, and I will be known as your wealthy patron.’ They’re not saying ‘I’m commissioning you to write a specific play where I charge in on a white horse.’ They’re just saying ‘I will pay your expenses, you’ll continue to do the art that you’ve become known for and that I like. My name might become associated with that art but really, I’m just giving you the income that your art can’t give you by itself.’ That’s how it used to work, one rich noble with a fortune would support an artist for the sake of getting their art made. Now the one wealthy aristocrat is lots of people chipping in!
Karen
Thanks Matt – this has given me a clearer understanding of options for raising money that are available thanks to the Internet. The history lesson at the end came as a surprise!
There’s more to this interview. Buy us a cuppa on Ko-fi to support our work, and you can read the unabridged versions of this and every Professional Relations interview.
🎧 1 November, Riverside Club: Two miracles collide in the first ever I Need A Miracle live show, at Audio Drama Hubfest 2025. This is a brand new script written by Matt and performed by Marta Da Silva and Benjamin May. You can get tickets for either the whole day of the festival or just the evening live shows.
🇳🇿 16 November, 21:30 GMT: I Need A Miracle is up for Best Concept and Best Writing at NZ Web Fest, and you can watch the award ceremony live on Youtube.
🐉 29 November, 09:00 GMT, Excel London: Play the card-based roleplaying game Spindlewheel with Matt at Dragonmeet, London’s annual one-day roleplaying game convention. No prep needed: just sign up for the game, turn up at 9am in a gothic mindset, and create a character at the table who’ll save or doom the ancient, crumbling city of Prexaria Fell.
🌎 Coming soon (planned for the end of November): our new online course, Doing business on a sick planet. The videos are filmed and edited and we're working on the details of the course, including some activities. Watch for early bird discount options mid-month – keep an eye on the website for more.
🛐 Curtain up on It Feeds on Fire in the Merely Roleplayers Studio, just in time for the scariest night of the year!
This three-act production, set in the universe of The Silt Verses (and using the series’ official roleplaying game), stars Fiona KT Howat (What Am I Rolling?), B Narr (The Silt Verses) and regular player Marta Da Silva (also The Silt Verses). The protests against the Outer Ornglen SSPC are being blamed on the influence of an illegal rogue god. Three Custodians, their own faith shaken, are sent to investigate.
🔬 Clear the calendar! Matt published No sacrifice too great, chapter 8 of Camera Obscura.
🖋 Want to write an episode of I Need A Miracle? Or know someone who’d write a great one? Express interest at the show’s homepage.
Karen highlights Poppy Treffrey:
Poppy came to my attention when I signed up for an online machine embroidery club. She is primarily an artist and runs a business based in Cornwall, translating her designs onto everyday useful items such as tea towels, pencil cases and much more. Her designs are influenced by her surroundings and her business ethos is to protect those surroundings.