Developing a Buzz:Participation

Fundraising
'''Fundraising is the process of soliciting and gathering money by requesting donations from individuals, businesses, charitable foundations, or governmental agencies. ''' Although fundraising typically refers to efforts to gather funds for not-for-profit organizations, it is sometimes used to refer to the identification and solicitation of investors or other sources of capital for for-profit enterprises.


 * individuals
 * businesses
 * (charitable) foundations
 * governmental agencies

Rule of Thumb (good salesmanship)

 * You should be able to fit your project into basically any calls for participation, grants, etc.
 * Standing out from the rest is good
 * More information is better
 * Promote yourself to the fullest
 * FOLLOW ALL RULES in submissions
 * Ask Questions of the different people who are giving funds
 * Build RELATIONSHIPS
 * fundraising is cumulative
 * start small and move bigger

Grant design
Things to Remember


 * Cover letter
 * Project description
 * Budget
 * Supplementary
 * Press
 * Images
 * Letter of support
 * Contributions
 * Donations/monetary
 * In Kind donation/Gift

Physical Presentation
What to Focus On


 * What you give them to keep
 * What your going to talk about when your there

Grants + Fellowships

 * PRO
 * Free money
 * Lets you do what you want to do usually
 * Lots of times offers assistance
 * Lots of times plugs you into network
 * CON
 * competitive
 * not that much money possibly for individual
 * Very specific

Investments

 * PRO
 * Lots of money
 * Very Specific
 * CON
 * Not free
 * Comes with strings and strings through contract

Venture Capital Investment

 * PRO
 * Lots and Lots of money for project
 * CON
 * They take the most money
 * Not known for humanity
 * for commercial development

Donations

 * PRO
 * Free Money
 * CON
 * Not really a good time scale for this
 * Not assured
 * Usually for organization as a tax write-off

Loans (credit cards, etc)

 * PRO
 * Lots of money
 * Don't care about content, etc
 * CON
 * High interest rate
 * you don't have the money
 * have to pay back

Grantwriting
Grantwriting is a type of fundraising.

The act of writing to attain a grant/fellowship.

Grants
'''A grant is money given to an individual or an organisation that does not hold an obligation of repayment. ''' In that respect, it differs from a loan, and does not incur any debt or interest. Grants can given out by foundations and governments. Grants to individuals can be either scholarships or donations to non-profit organizations. Other grants include intergovernmental grants which are used to correct fiscal imbalances between different levels of government. Many federations use these grants to correct imbalances between taxing and spending across different levels of government. Examples include the US, Australia and Kenya.


 * Other non-profits (schools)
 * Foundations
 * Governments

Examples

 * school-based grants
 * Government grants
 * Financial aid grants
 * http://www.creative-capital.org/
 * http://www.fondation-langlois.org/
 * http://www.nyfa.org/

Fellowship
'''The financial grant made to a fellow in a college or university. '''

Also see wikipedia's entry

Examples

 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Fellowship
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSF
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guggenheim_Fellowship
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_Management_Fellowship
 * List of Graduate School Fellowships

Participation (events,etc)
The act of taking part or sharing in something 


 * Without participation, your network is not built.

Building Relationships

 * This is the most important thing to do to participate and get connected.
 * Good relationships are built through time, space, and locale.
 * Don't burn bridges ever.
 * People move, and this expands relationships
 * Bright node vs. Dark node (sometimes you have to go dark...for example the Rizza went dark for 5 years in order to get things done.)

Resources
All things are resources, and thus, to get want you want you must give some resource to get one in return. Identifying these connections is very important.

Examples

 * nettime.org and nettime blog (announcement list)
 * weekly/monthly meetings
 * http://dorkbot.org
 * http://www.creativecommons.org/salon
 * http://www.sfai.edu/design/salon
 * annual conferences
 * http://www.siggraph.org
 * http://www.sxsw.com
 * http://www.e3expo.com
 * Collage Art Association (grants as well)
 * Student Groups/unions
 * Trade Groups
 * Association of Computing Machinery