The co-op needs to raise 5000€ to pay audit costs.
[info needed]
The co-op needs to raise 5000€ to pay audit costs.
[info needed]
The post above is set as a “wiki” so anyone can edit to add more info/context. @brndnkng @directors @Nick_M
Then we can sync with @Sam_Martyn and @simonfreund to start getting out the message and directing folks to Open Collective.
Per my comment in November, I suggest this figure be raised to 50,000€.
Approximates:
5000 for three audits 2019 - 21
2000 for 2020 Taxes
1500 for VAT Registration
1500 for Account Maintenance (Bookkeeping oversight)
25000 Contingency (Potential Director Liability)
15000 Exec/Admin/DSP Funding
Thanks for sharing, Rich.
Are these costs ordered by priority? And if not, how would you order them?
I’m wondering what steps have been taken on this, since your initial post, to make it happen?
I’m also wondering if there’s any harm in starting with 5k, calling that a success and then scaling up? It seems more manageable and do-able. But I can also see it being maybe something that shoots us in the foot long term where we’re like "but we already raised x money, why weren’t you up front?
I’m curious on people with fundraising experience to weigh in on this, particularly @zetto.plus @ode12, and @simonfreund ?
If we are aim for such a high goal, it would be beneficial to do a retrospective on our last fundraising effort before planning our next one. Last time we shot for 20,000 and earned about 7,000? If we reflect on how things went last time, we’ll be a better situation for the next one.
I’m not sure about how much money makes sense as a goal, but I can confidently suggest that any financial goal is sorely ambitious without a fundraising structure and culture (and also procedure where folks can plug in and assist mechanically). I think success with fundraising depends on how folks can anticipate what is achievable in a specific time frame.
Some notes on our last crowdfunding campaign effort, and thoughts from me:
This previous crowdfunding campaign ran over the course of about 5 months, with most of the donations coming in months 1-2 and most of the memberships coming in months 2-3, from what I could remember.
Good Things:
Room for Improvement:
There are probably more good things and room for improvement things I can add beside what I just listed off the top of my head, but overall, this leads me to my opinion points on this potential future campaign:
I really believe in the mission of Resonate, and I think we can do some amazing things, but I also don’t want us to repeat the same mistakes, so hopefully this is a good retrospective that we can continue discussing to build something even better moving forward.
Thanks,
– Sam Martyn
Thank you, @Sam_Martyn – this is really helpful and a great starting point for planning a new crowdfunding campaign. However, I would like to concentrate on what’s closest to us for now, which is the AGM, by trying to get as many people to participate as possible. This will be a good chance to address that the coop is in need of money and to figure out how much money that actually is and what it will be used for.
Also, I believe that raising 50k simply to keep the accounting running is way too little. If we raise money, we need to raise as much as to keep the whole coop running, meaning paying for the onboarding of new artist, developing the player (apps) and basically everything that is needed to start making money. This might sound too ambitious, but there’s really no point in fixing holes when the pipe is not connected – if you know what I mean.
So, YES – let’s raise money, but let’s aim for what we actually need (this is what we have to figure out first) and then come up with a plan how this is possible.
I’m here to help with that, I simply believe this should happen after the AGM, when everyone is on the same page again for the next year.
Are there any grants or other kind of support we can apply for, something like this?
I don’t know, but this is a great start already
Are you interested in taking this further by finding out how to apply or by writing an application or anything else?
I still believe we have to find out how much funding we actually need first, but it’s good to have some potential funding aligned already and to gather possibilities.
Thank you very much for bringing this up : )
I’m terrible at writing formal stuff, but I can look around and see what an application should contain, and whether we fulfill their criteria
EU:
Probably the best place to start is this funding guide/questionnaire.
This document shows some of the distributed/endorsed(?) grants by Music Moves Europe. I think we’re in the ballpark of AVAERA on page 4, but our project is more better in many ways, in my opinion.
This document shows many other accepted/endorsed(?) grants. A shortlist:
– European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, page 46. They work for fairer social and economic conditions for artists, which is also one of our goals. They seem pretty big, with likeminded partners in other continents. Maybe we should have a chat with them, let them know we exist?
– European Music Incubator, page 76. They guide artists to sustainable business models. Small artists are paid more per play on Resonate than other platforms, and our coop nature is inherently more sustainable. Maybe we should have a chat with them, let them know we exist?
– European Music Market Accelerator, page 80. Like EMI, but for bigger artists it seems.
European commission about democracy and art. Resonate is democratic.
European commission about art economy that works for the people. Our economic model is fair to people, in my impression.
Horizon Europe work programme for art 2021-22 has interesting things:
– Media for democracy – democratic media, page 30. They want a media sector that’s more participatory, transparent and conducive to democracy.
This project might be interested in having a talk with us. They’re specifically investigating the effect of large music platforms on fairness in the music industry.
This publication shows some of the European Commissions thoughts on music distribution. They mention that transparency to listeners, artists and other stakeholders, and open innovation should be rewarded. We definitely tick those boxes.
There’s also futo in the US, which supports a few big existing FOSS projects with grants and incubatoring(?). Their ideal applicant profile seems to be projects that inhibit large corporate control of social media, messaging, repairs and computing in general. I’ve got a feeling we might fit that profile. The deadline for Spring 2023 grant applications are Jan 1st, however.
With this, we have some guideposts for funding applications
Wow – Thank you, @relish : )
That’s an amazing list. I’m currently trying to find out where we keep “lists” at Resonate, so we can add this or create a new one.
Opportunities like the ones you mentioned often come back in cycles, so it’s good to archive even those we will most likely miss this or next year, such as futo.
I feel in this forum, things can get lost quite quickly after they’ve been mentioned once, so I would like to set up (or see if it already exists) a place for information like this.
Maybe you know more or have an idea how to “store” this information, so we can use and update it in the future?
I think the way around this on the forum is to create a post that’s specifically about finding and applying to grants, and turning it into a wiki.
We’ve actually got a private category called Grants which has nothing in it. I think we could make it public and start a wiki post in it? We’ve also got the Handbook category which to me it makes sense to have a wiki page in there for grant applications. That would make it easy to find.
I use the search feature a lot on the forum and that helps. If we use some of the more static categories to gather information I think that’ll help too.
I’m wary of introducing Yet Another Platform because people are already experiencing platform fatigue (there’s a lot of complaints around mattermost for example).
I don’t know how other people use the forum, but what grabs my attention isn’t the three non-iconed categories in the header, it’s the three latest/pinned posts and the upper 2/3 of the sidebar categories with icons. I had never clicked the handbook till now, actually .
I think this makes it easier to find than only putting it in the Handbook. Maybe we could have a post in Handbook redirect to the wiki post in Grants category? Or the other way around? Double visibility is doubly visible, after all.