Within the past several years, two filmmaker friends of mine ran successful crowdfunding campaigns on the Seed&Spark platform. In addition to successfully hitting their goals, both running successful campaigns, both friends stated that it was a wonderful experience, from launch to completion.
When determining which platform to use to crowdfund my latest film, Oh, The Guilt, those accolades weighed heavily in my decision — not to mention, the idea of a film-centric platform sounded great. My team and I considered Kickstarter and Indiegogo as well, two platforms on which I’ve personally run both successful and unsuccessful campaigns. We considered the pros and cons of each, and the supposed pros of Seed&Spark outweighed the supposed cons.
Unfortunately, there were numerous cons that could not have been anticipated until it was too late.
By the time the campaign ended, I was left with a bad taste in my mouth. Not because the campaign ended badly — in fact, we exceeded our modest goal. Yet this campaign’s success was one hundred percent because of friends, family members, and coworkers, and their love for our work. From Seed&Spark, I received nothing more than a “crowdfunding shopping cart” and boilerplate pre-launch crowdfunding tips. This in exchange for sharing the money brought in, charged either to us or our backers.
Worse, had I not encountered numerous issues with S&S, I believe we could have raised quite a bit more.
On the Seed&Spark “Mission/About Us” page, five VALUES are highlighted that supposedly shape the S&S culture: Empathy, Community, Integrity, Creative Energy, Belonging. My experience on the platform felt contrary to each espoused value.
Integrity. The campaign I spearheaded ran almost entirely during the month of February 2021, and during the entire month of February, the “View All” button (to see all projects, sorted by various factors, such as genre) was malfunctioning. There was no way to find my film campaign on the platform unless you already had a direct link.
When I inquired about this problem of total invisibility, I received the following response:
The ‘view all’ button only pulling up one page is due to a known bug on our site that we plan to address as soon as we can. Searching for a project name using the search bar does still work though. Apologies for any inconvenience.
However, whether the film name is searchable is moot, as the people who know about me and the film project already had a direct link. By using S&S — a crowdfunding platform solely for films — I was attempting to tap into folks from outside of my own sphere, drawn by Seed&Spark’s mission. By the time the campaign expired, the bug continued to persist.
When I asked for a possible discount on the platform fee due to this horrid website bug, I received no reply.
Later, I followed up, asking for an update on the website bug, and received the following canned response:
Congratulations on hitting your goal! Why not set up a stretch goal?
Belonging. With only a couple days remaining on our campaign, I asked if it would be possible for S&S to provide some sort of assistance — a final push to help spread the word. To this point, I had received nothing. Again, I received a congratulatory message, followed by a non-answer to my question:
All of your concerted outreach got you to this point and that is certainly something to be proud of. All social media promotion of crowdfunding campaigns is to the discretion of the marketing team though this is on their radar and they will try to amplify if/where they can.
Empathy. Each time I sent an inquiry about the website bug, I received a “Congratulations for hitting your goal!” Rather than taking my concerns seriously or attempting to ameliorate the situation, I repeatedly received a canned reply, which struck me as condescending and lacking in empathy.
Seed&Spark, I don’t want your team to look at what my friends and family came to the table with. I want your followers to know about our film. I personally know nearly 100% of our film’s backers. I could have done an identically successful campaign on Indiegogo, or on my own website with a simple Paypal button.
Creative Energy. There was no evidence of any creativity on the part of Seed&Spark to spread the word of our film. In fact, I didn’t even receive any basic, rote efforts to spread the word. No mentions on Facebook or Twitter. No mailing list highlights. Not only did I not see any “creative energy,” I didn’t see S&S doing a bare minimum.
I and my team are happy to do heavy lifting when it comes to funding a passion project. But the reason we chose Seed&Spark was to tap into the Seed&Spark followers and visitors, not to do all the work unassisted while the film’s fundraising page remained hidden on the S&S platform to all but those with a direct link.
Community. Prior to launch, I inquired as to how S&S determines to share a campaign via emails, social media, and on the platform’s homepage (these shared campaigns are known as “Staff Picks”). In response, I was told that Staff Picks are selected by the S&S team, highlighting campaigns that have reached 30% of their goal. We hit our 30% goal in the first week of our campaign, and were never featured. We were never offered any alternative way to reach out to the supposed S&S community.
In fact, nothing about this experience made us feel like we belonged to a community. On the contrary, I felt like I was on my own. And again, I can’t help but think, had these issues been avoided, the campaign could have raised significantly more money.
Our team is grateful to our friends, family, and others to whom we reached out directly. Their support is humbling and lovely. Unfortunately, Seed&Spark failed to deliver any significant value, and I do not recommend using this platform.
