Phoenicia, NY

With the current contraction in the economy, many non-profits, the arts and rescue organizations have been struggling to raise funds to maintain their services or create new projects. Fortunately, the Internet has made it possible for small philanthropies and shoe-string arts organizations to raise money to help bankroll their causes.

Internet Fundraising and the Arts
The T.M.I. Project out of Rosendale NY facilitates non-fiction writing and performance of personal monologues and has just concluded its fundraising drive gathering $20,000 towards future programming, overhead and outreach. This organization works on a shoe-string budget and thanks to a campaign fueled by Facebook, Twitter, email and hosted by Kickstarter.com, they were able to raise enough money to reach out to underserved communities. The Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice was able to raise enough money via Pledgethis.com to fund a full live orchestra for their 2011 production of Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. The organizers of the festival publicized their fund drive through a dedicated twitter account (@voicefest), a blog (phoeniciavoicefest.com) and 2 facebook pages: a mobile profile that acted as a “friend” and the other was a standard static fan page. A local film director, Laurent Rejto, is currently funding his short film, Persephone starring Oscar winner Melissa Leo and Gilles Malkine, through indiegogo.com. This project is a modern day re-telling of the ancient greek myth of Persephone that sought to explain the changing of the seasons. Although this project is a labor of love that depends on volunteers, there are still many costs to meet in order to produce and finish the film. Their donation page can be found here: http://indiegogo.com/Persephone Depending on the level of sponsorship, various “perks” are offered such as a satirical CD by some of the cast members, to T-shirts, signed cast photos to actually being cast as an extra in the movie and recieve an associate producer credit!

Animal Rescue and Disaster Recovery Fundraising with the Internet
After the devastation of Hurricane Irene, local organizations such as the Phoenicia Rotary, Timberland Camp, and Friends of RSK Farm have been using a combination of Facebook, Twitter, email, and webblogging to raise money to help their Catskills Mountain communities recover from the storm floods. An estimated $150,000 was raised in just a few weeks and distributed among the affected mountain towns. Two local gourmet food eateries, Blue Mountain Bistro-To-Go and Peekamoose Restaurant have sponsored fund drives and Peekamoose is donating proceeds from their Thanksgiving dinner to the Bob Kiley who lost his farm’s topsoil to Irene floods. Online donations to the  RSK Farm campaign can still be made securely onnline at http://help-the-farm.org . Crow Dog Farm, of Lexington NY recently won a Pepsi Refresh grant to start a horse rescue operation. Alicia Schaefer used a concentrated Twitter campaign to garner enough votes to earn the seed money to purchase horses earmarked for slaughter from auction and rehabilitate them in safety at her family farm in Lexington, NY.

Communities Come Together

"One Voice For Laos" Teens Sponsor a 5K Run to Raise Money for a Laotian Orphanage

Local teens from Woodstock, Shandaken, Olive, Saugerties and Kingston are working together to raise money for an orphanage in Laos. “One Voice for Laos” has many events planned throughout the year from 5k runs, to a booth at the Woodstock Flea Market, to “teen-only” dances.  Publicity for their events are done through constant contact emails, newsletters, facebook events and an ongoing blog. They plan to travel to Laos later in the year to donate 2 weeks of work and any  monies raised will help offset their costs of travel and materials.  The next One Voice for Laos event is a dance at the Colony Cafe Nov 12 from 6-10pm.
Whether to help the arts or animals or communities in crisis, the internet has become an important fundraising tool for small organizations. The outreach of the web is worldwide and has made it easier for artists, causes, and volunteers to broaden their audience and raise money to make miracles happen.