U Up? I think I lost all your money...
or, how we dodged a bullet and relaunched our campaign.
It's 6:16 PM in LA, and we have no idea whether or not any of our supporters are ever going to get their money back. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here for part 1 of this story, where our crowdfunding platform declares insolvency on Giving Tuesday. This was, of course, a low moment—equally terrifying and heartbreaking—since we’ve put everything into this campaign.
If you’re unfamiliar with what a crowdfunding campaign is like, so was I. We spent months preparing, and every day calling, emailing, and texting everyone we’ve ever met to contribute—all leading up to this final week. We’re out on a limb, and if it turns out that we lost everybody's money, there is no way anyone will ever trust us again and well end up on that Midnight Train to Georgia.
When I first thought about bringing my vision to the screen, I didn’t think it would involve potentially losing tens of thousands of dollars from some of my closest friends. (Footnote: I will come to find out from some more seasoned producers that… “Hey, that's showbiz, baby” :-)). But we didn’t want our filmmaking career to end before it even started, so what the heck are we going to do?
We Emailed the platform (of course)
No response. (of course)
Called them.
“Were sorry this person does not have a voicemail set up”
Oh God.
A producer friend who knows the owners reaches out to them.
An hour later, she confirms: yes, the company is “out of business” and promises “more info tomorrow.”
More info tomorrow!? And how are they “out of business” if they are still accepting donations? Our campaign is still accepting donations. Someone new just contributed five minutes ago! My paranoid mind ramps up: They’re stalling. This is BS. They’re stealing everything. Must protect myself. Screenshot everything. Review all contracts. Download all emails.
It’s 8 PM. I’m alone in my house, just losing it down a rabbit hole of contracts and screenshots, occasionally calling my wife is is with her grieving family in NY. Everything’s captured. Contacts downloaded. I’ve feverishly gone through every line of fine print. A clause in our agreement says, “If a contributor cancels their contribution DURING the campaign, it will be refunded.”
The campaign is still open. Is this our salvation? It’s open now, but for how long? We have 118 supporters—do we call them all and tell them to file a card dispute? We have to tell people right? Like right now, right? It’s irresponsible not to tell them, right? But we have no information.
I text our biggest supporter, a good friend who’s in NY. It’s 11:40 PM on the East Coast, but maybe he’s awake.
Perhaps that wasn’t the right opener. Realizing my texts sound like a follow-up to a mediocre Tinder date, I clarify: “I’m not trying to be sexy, we have a situation.”
He calls me. I’m terrified.
This is a dear friend who has entrusted us with a lot of money, and I’m about to tell him we may have lost it all.
“I’ll just dispute the charge, but that’s super annoying. I’m falling asleep—figure it out, call me tomorrow.”
His relaxation relaxes me a bit. Maybe it will be ok? He reminds me we have a lawyer friend in Hawaii. He’s definitely up!
He picks up and brings some much-needed relief, reason, and expertise. I learn Crisis Lesson #1: When some wild shit goes down, your first call should be to your lawyer.
“Someone not giving back 20K+ in donations from a crowdfunding campaign is definitely embezzlement—super illegal—and they’d totally go to jail. So, this is probably not what’s happening. Good people go bankrupt too. One of these two things is more likely:
They return all the money to all the contributors.
Everything gets locked up in bankruptcy court for 6 months, 9 months—God knows how long.
Okay, we’ve gone from a 100% chance of losing all the money to a 50% chance. Well, I’ll take those odds.
The next morning, after 17 hours without any warning, without notice, without communication... all of our contributors receive an email.
Subject line: “THE ‘WISH YOU WERE HERE’ CAMPAIGN HAS ENDED.”
Our first reaction? Thank heavens! Our people are getting their money back. Deep exhale. This was the best outcome we could have hoped for (and only 24 hours of complete confusion and terror).
Second thought: Wait!? Our campaign hasn’t ended—y’all just went out of business! This isn’t a success! Hey! What the heck!?
Our supporters started emailing us the same thing:
“Wait, your campaign ended? I thought you had 6 days left? What the heck?”
But it didn’t matter. That was it. Just like that, our campaign was over. $22K was gone. Messages trickled in confirming that supporters had received their refunds, and we literally, to this day, have not heard another word from Support Our Story.
For us, this was devastating. It wasn’t so much about the money, but the momentum. Sure, we had $22K in the bank, but with six days to go, we had been ramping up for our biggest fundraising blitz yet. We had almost $10K more committed, $2,500 ready to be deposited, conversations happening with people about to donate—even a back-of-the-napkin plan for who was going to get us over the top to that magic $40K.
Now, it was back to square one. Deflated and defeated, we reached out to everyone, one by one, to explain what had happened, to let them know they’d be refunded, and to assure them our movie was not dead! We were very much alive and still going. And every single person only had one thing to say:
“Just let me know where to send the money.”
We were just blown away by how unphased our supporters were. how much they cared. How much they loved the project, and how much they just wanted to see this movie get made. It was really inspiring. and that was a good question:
Where were they gonna send the money?