Revisiting Cartoon Brew’s Crowdfunding Policy

Over two years ago, we instituted a strict “no links to crowdfunding” policy. In other words, we will never post links to any fundraising projects on Kickstarter, IndieGogo, or any other number of sites. If it’s a noteworthy project for reasons other than the creator needing money, we may write about it at a later date, but only after the fundraising campaign has ended.

To be clear, we have no issues with artists who use crowdfunding to raise funds for animation projects. We instituted the policy as a response to the growing volume of film funding requests, which threatened to overwhelm our ability to focus on more important topics, like films that have already been finished. Even though we haven’t linked to any crowdfunding projects in over two years, we still receive multiple submissions every single day–imagine the volume if we actually linked to them.

Further, if we linked to projects or artists whose work we personally enjoyed, we could be accused of giving unfair preferential treatment to certain people. Within the tight-knit animation community, we didn’t want to constantly be put in the position of defending ourselves about why we supported one person in their efforts to raise money and not another. The easiest solution was to remove ourselves from the fundraising pool and remain as objective observers of the broader fundraising scene.

In the two years since we’ve instituted the policy, crowdfunding has grown to become an even bigger part of the animation world. Today, mainstream artists like Phil Tippett and Ken Duncan use it to raise funds, and more ambitious projects are being undertaken thanks to this new type of film funding. We thought it would be a good time to revisit the issue and we want to hear what readers think.

Do you think we should treat crowdfunding submissions as we do any other news submission and give them editorial consideration for Cartoon Brew? Should we only focus on projects from established artists who have mainstream credits under their belt? Should we be completely objective and post any crowdfunding submission if they pay a small fee to be listed on Cartoon Brew? Or should we continue with our existing policy and not link to any fundraising efforts? There are any number of ways to handle this and we’re open to your suggestions.

PS – Just to be clear, we are not changing our policy anytime soon so don’t send us crowdfunding links.