I Once Raised Money by Selling Empty Space
I once raised money by selling holes in the ground.
Literally.
No product. No equity. No elaborate fundraising campaign. Just empty holes that needed to be dug around an animal sanctuary filled with rescued lions, Siberian tigers, jaguars and cougars.
Then the newspapers picked up the story.
What began as a desperate need for cash turned into a story people wanted to become part of — and we surpassed the fundraising objective.
You have an imagination problem.
That experience taught me something I have carried into business and film financing for more than twenty years.
Most people trying to raise money are asking the same questions, approaching the same people and making essentially the same pitch.
Those questions are understandable.
But when everyone is asking essentially the same questions, everyone tends to pursue essentially the same solutions.
What if the breakthrough comes from asking an entirely different question?
That is what happened when I found myself trying to raise money for an animal sanctuary in 2004 — and somehow ended up selling empty space for money.
That shift changes fundraising.
Instead of beginning with the amount of money you do not have, you begin examining the assets, relationships, needs, stories, audiences, locations, access, experiences and unusual opportunities already sitting inside the project.
What does the project already control or have access to?
Who already cares about the subject, community or experience?
What can you offer that people ordinarily cannot experience?
Who benefits if the project succeeds?
What makes the fundraising itself interesting enough to talk about?
What contribution could unlock something substantially more valuable?
Film financing is especially vulnerable to conventional thinking.
A filmmaker needs money, so the immediate instinct is to search for investors. Then comes the deck, the introductions, the emails, the networking events and the hope that someone with sufficient capital will believe strongly enough in the project to write the check.
Investors may absolutely be part of the financing structure.
But they do not necessarily have to be the first source of value you create.
What could become sponsorship? What could become an event? What could become a partnership? What could reduce the budget? What could generate development capital? What could attract publicity? What could make someone want to participate before you ever ask them to invest?
Sometimes an unconventional idea does more than raise money.
It creates attention.
Attention creates conversations.
Conversations create relationships.
Relationships create opportunities that were not visible when the only objective was finding cash.
Your project may already contain its own version of those holes.
What Is Your Film's Version of the Holes?
If you are trying to finance a film, the answer may not begin with another investor list or another hundred cold emails.
It may begin by looking at the project differently and finding ways to create value, leverage, partnerships and momentum before asking someone else to provide the capital.
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