This panel will focus on ways that filmmakers can use new and unique web-based tools along with traditional philanthropic incentives to bring in non-traditional funding. Crowdfunding, combined with fiscal sponsorship, is a powerful and effective way to use online social networks to cultivate new donors. The panel will focus on how to successfully use crowdfunding in conjunction with fiscal sponsorship. The panelists will bring their own experiences to contextualize how crowdfunding can amp up a film's fundraising campaign in a short time frame. Find out how you can make crowdfunding work for you, including ways to create an amazing pitch clip, offer perks that work, frame your fundraising campaigns so your donors become your audience and remain connected, plus more. We’ll bring together professionals from the front lines of crowdfunding, fiscal sponsorship, and successful crowdfunded projects who can help you navigate the cutting edge of funding.
Cynthia López
Executive Vice President / Executive Producer
American Documentary|POV
Cynthia López is the Executive Vice President/ Executive Producer of the award-winning POV documentary series. López is responsible for all aspects of the organization’s development including programming, broadcast distribution, community engagement, communications and marketing, online initiatives and overall strategic growth of the organization.
POV has been honored with every coveted industry award including a Special News & Documentary Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking, the Independent Documentary Association IDA Award for Best Continuing Series, 23 additional Emmy Awards, 12 George Foster Peabody Awards, nine duPont-Columbia Broadcast Journalism Awards, four Independent Spirit Awards, three Academy Awards®, the Prix Italia and the Webby.
López joined American Documentary/POV in 2000, serving first as communications director. Under her leadership in communications, national media coverage of POV documentary programs more than tripled, and she forged strategic partnerships with Harpo Studios, Netflix, ABC News’ Nightline, WNYC New York Public Radio, Pentagram, Inc., Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and Ms. magazine, among many others. The promotional campaign López spearheaded for the POV film Farmingville won the prestigious EPPSilon Award.
Before joining POV, López spent four years at Libraries for the Future as advocacy director, developing innovative strategies to serve some of the nation’s poorest libraries. Her previous experience in public media includes stints as acting executive director of Deep Dish TV Network and executive producer of Satellite University Network. Her production credits include serving as executive producer on “Beyond the Browning of America” (PBS) hosted by Maria Hinojosa and as senior producer for “The Quincentenary,” a Television Espanola, Canal+ and BBC
co-production.
López is the founding chair of the board of directors and a trustee of NALIP (National Association
of Latino Independent Producers) and is on the advisory committee of REEL New York (THIRTEEN/WNET.ORG). She has been a media advisor for the Heinz Awards, Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, Latino Public Broadcasting, Rockefeller Fellowships, Independent Television Service (ITVS), Americans for the Arts, the Banff Centre in Canada and AIVF (Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers). She has been an invited speaker at a variety of venues including Medimed (Spain), Prague Eastern European International Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Hot Docs (Canada), Silverdocs, Independent Feature Project, Hofstra University, White House Conference on Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Brown University, United Nations Women’s Conference, Channels for Change (Scotland) Center for Democratic Communications (South Africa) and the international media alliance Videazimut (Peru), among others.
Dianne Debicella is Fractured Atlas's Program Director for Fiscal Sponsorship. Dianne helps over 2,300 sponsored artists and emerging organizations, representing all artistic disciplines, find funding and
other resources to support their work. Since starting at Fractured Atlas
in 2006, she has grown the fiscal sponsorship program into the largest
multi-discipline arts fiscal sponsorship program in the country. She received her B.F.A. in
photography from Massachusetts College of Art and an M.P.S. from Pratt
Institute's Arts Management program.
Danae Ringelmann co-founded IndieGoGo - a leading international funding platform - to democratize fundraising. Passionate about helping artists and entrepreneurs embrace the DIWO (Do-It-With-Others) approach, Danae speaks often at conferences. Recent speaking engagements include MAD Hong Kong, Big Omaha, Producer’s Guild of America, Foundation Center, Internet Week NY, and Digital Hollywood. Fast Company Magazine recently named Danae one of the Top 50 Most Influential Women in Technology.
Prior to IndieGoGo, Danae was a Securities Analyst at Cowen & Co. where she covered entertainment companies including Pixar, Lionsgate, Disney, and Electronic Arts. Danae also focused on cable network, NFL, newspaper and hedge fund clientele while at JPMorgan's Investment Bank and Private Bank. In the wake of 9/11, Danae co-produced a concert reading of Incident at Vichy, an Arthur Miller play addressing the politically charged topic of racial profiling.
Danae is a CFA charterholder and holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Danae graduated with a B.A. in Humanities from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead Scholar and varsity rower.
Jed is Co-Founder and COO of RocketHub.com, a launchpad and community for independent artists, entrepreneurs and their supporters. However, Jed’s career began at the age of eight, when he took to the stage as an actor and singer. Jed toured nationally and internationally as a boy soprano, made his Broadway debut at the age of fifteen, and is featured in the hit movies Home Alone, and Home Alone II: Lost in New York. Jed is a graduate of Harvard University, where he earned his degree in Astronomy & Astrophysics, and now lives in NYC with his wife Kate and their little dog Sophie.
A Brooklyn based filmmaker and writer, Angela Tucker was the Director of Production at Big Mouth Films, a social issue documentary production company that is a project of Arts Engine, Inc. There, she produced PUSHING THE ELEPHANT (IDFA, Independent Lens), the Emmy-nominated documentary, DEADLINE (NBC), ELECTION DAY (SXSW 07, PBS' POV) and BEYOND THE STEPS: ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER (Great Performances). She was also a consulting producer on POP STAR ON ICE which inspired the series BE GOOD, JOHNNY WEIR. Angela directed two short pieces for The National Black Programming Consortium and ITVS' Initiative, THE MASCULINITY PROJECT, entitled INVISIBLE MEN and will direct a web series for them entitled BLACK FOLK DON'T scheduled to launch in June 2011. She is also currently directing (A)SEXUAL, a feature length documentary in post-production about people who experience no sexual attraction. She received her MFA in Film from Columbia University where she was awarded a Dean's Fellowship. Her thesis fiction short, THE BIRTHDAY GIRL, screened in various festivals and was awarded Milos Forman Finishing Funds. Angela has her BA with Honors in Theater and African American Studies from Wesleyan University. In 2010, Angela was a Yaddo fellow.
