7 Actionable Steps to Raise In-Kind Donations for your Indiefilm.

Filmmaking is HARD.  Making your first movie is even harder.  You have to gather all of the stuff you need to make your movie, often working with funds that you’ve saved up yourself.  Sometimes you’ll have some additional funds from your friends and family, an inheritance, crowdfunding or some other windfall, but even with any or all of those funding is likely to be tight.  

So as part of my ongoing efforts to make filmmaking easier, here’s an entry-level guide to getting in-kind donations for your film.  

Try to get fiscal sponsorship

Fiscal sponsorship is essentially an arrangement where a non-profit organization lets you borrow their tax deductible status for the purposes of taking in donations.  If you can get fiscal sponsorship from a reputable 501C-3 non-profit organization, any donations you take in will be considered tax deductible.

Generally, the non-profit will take a fee as part of letting you use their 501C-3 status.  Most of the time, this fee is somewhere around 9-10%.  How this will apply to in kind donations is something you’ll have to work out with the organization from which you seek fiscal sponsorship.

Being able to solicit donations as tax deductions from local businesses makes it much easier to convert them as it gives them an additional incentive to help you.  

Consider what products could appear on screen.

In order to figure out what you might be able to get donated, you first must discern what you need.  Go to your Day out of Days report (DOOD) and check out what might be the most likely elements you could get a donation for.  You can work from these lists for the next steps.

Figure out where you can get what you need.

Once you have a list of what you’ll need, it’s time to figure out where you can get it. First, cross off the stuff you already have. Make a list of 3 potential places you could procure any of the items on your list then move on to the next step.

You’ll have to spend some money on your production, this extension can help you save.  

Before we go into how to get free stuff for your movie, it’s important to remember that sometimes the wise move is to spend a little bit of money to save a lot of time.  For those situations, This Chrome extension can help you find the best deals on a lot.of things you’ll buy anyway.  Check, it out here.    

Approach local businesses about donations.

You can approach the 3 businesses to see if they’ll discount, donate, or loan you the items you need. 

They’ll be a lot more likely to donate to you if you have the fiscal sponsorship.  If you’re a student, you should definitely say so, as it makes them even more likely to donate what you need to make your film.  

While mom-and-pop stores are easier to approach, many large chains have some level of budget for these sorts of donations.  Grocery stores normally have something they can give away to non-profits, and this can be a great way to cut your craft services budget.

Don’t be afraid to call major brands, but don’t expect too much 

If you’re bold, you could approach a major brand about getting some in-kind donations for your movie.  This could be getting Starbucks to donate a bunch of beans for craft services, or Mercedes letting you use a car from a dealership for a day.  If you do this, you should be aware that the chances for success are not as high as approaching a mom and pop shop, but the potential rewards can be huge.

Just keep in mind, if you are trying to get something from a local store in a massive conglomerate, it can be easier to go into that store first.  A lot of brands are looking for ways to increase visibility, sometimes directly, and sometimes through third-party brokers.

In fact, according to a study from hubspot 60% businesses small and large have stated that they rely heavily on micro and nano influencers to build trust in those brands. For the uninitiated, nano influencers have 5,000 subscribers or fewer and micro influencers have 50,000 subscribers. It’s not exactly the same space, but it’s a similar one.

Keep Track of everything you’ve raised.

Getting Donations will increase the Production Value of your film, and you should keep track of the value you’re adding. Not all budgeting platforms can track this in line, but you should keep a separate tally somewhere.  Eventually, a distributor will ask you what your budget was and you should include your in-kind efforts.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you found this article useful.  It you want more film business content, check out my free film business resource pack!