Is My Crowdfunding Goal Realistic?
As I wrote in my post about why flexible funding is not your friend (and IndieGoGo officially agrees as of November 2025, breaking with over a decade of flexible funding tradition!):
[T]hat’s what crowdfunding is. It’s a promise to an audience that for the amount of money you set as your goal, you will make something…
Your campaign goal should not be an arbitrary number, or what you think you can raise, or even what you hope you can raise. It should be the number, which you can back up with a spreadsheet or pie chart, that is the minimum viable budget to follow through with your promise. You can have a secret goal that’s higher, or a stretch goal with a concrete additional promise attached (“if we raise $1000 more, we can film an extra episode!” etc), but the initial goal, the one you’re primarily focused on, should be no more or less than exactly what it will take to make the thing you want to make, or take a significant step forward.
So if you’ve broken down your script, built a budget, and come up with a minimum viable dollar amount for your crowdfunding goal, the question becomes…
Can I raise this much money at once?
Maybe. I hope so! But as I’ve stated before:
[Y]our crowdfunding success has far more to do with your outreach plan and direct messaging than it does with having a good idea.
Ok. Enough quoting myself. Even I’m getting annoyed, and I love to read myself talk. The point is: the realisticness of your crowdfunding goal is a factor of your outreach more than it is the “viability” of your idea. There is no statistically significant difference in success rate or fundraising range between comedies and dramas, fiction and documentary, or horror and fantasy. I’ve seen short films raise $100k, and features raise $10. Crowdfunding, and the mortifying ordeal of asking for money, is the great equalizer.
Check the math (sorry)
It’s simple math, but math nonetheless! Let’s start with our variables:
- The most common crowdfunding pledge is $25, with the average individual contribution coming in under $100
- The maximum likely conversion rate for an email list is around 15%* (for sending individualized emails; not a newsletter, absoLUTEly not a mass BCC)
- The maximum likely conversion rate for social media is <1% ( statistic is platform agnostic)
Email list math & variables
*I campaign managed a $15k goal project last year which hit 108% funded whose email list conversion rate was 4.3%, and campaign managed a $50k goal project this year which hit 110% funded whose email list conversion rate was 13% (and they’d run a $50k campaign the year before with an 8% conversion rate).
Also, worth mentioning: while I use email as my example in all this math, direct messages/texting has roughly the same expected conversion rate- the important thing is that it’s DIRECT and PERSONALIZED. But email is easiest to do at scale, so it’s what we’re focusing on today.
All this to say: email math has changed a lot, or perhaps people have prioritized emails and staying in touch this way less, making them overall less effective. The actual percentage of conversion will definitely be lower when you’re newer to crowdfunding or are speaking with people who don’t know your body of work as well. A big reason the client with 12% conversion had a response rate that high was because they also had a substantial Substack, and had a 6.8% conversion rate from their paid subscribers to their crowdfunding campaign. Even more interestingly, remember how this client had previously run a successful campaign I managed the year before? They only had a 24% conversion rate from the previous campaign’s supporters; their success the second time came from their continued emphasis on their newsletter and building their list in between campaigns.
Obviously there are additional variables to contend with. Do you have uniquely high-spending supporters on your list who skew the average; a family member or friend who’s able to put in a significant amount of money to take the pressure off everyone else? Also, consider that the average expected contribution changes as your audience’s demographic does: the average is $25, but I’ve produced projects where the average is closer to $50 because their audience is a little older/wealthier.
In the case of the two-time crowdfunder I mentioned above, in their first campaign, the most common pledge was $100, but in their second, the most common pledge was $50.
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For that second campaign, 56% supporters responded to a query about how they found the campaign. Out of that:
- 49% reported an email from the filmmaker (41% only reported a filmmaker email) being the way they heard about the campaign
- 29% reported it was a particular livestream during the campaign with a prominent influencer (24% only reported this livestream)
- 15% reported it was social media (11% only reported social media). For context, the conversion rate for this person’s social media (with a total of approx 56,400 followers across three primary, regularly-updated platforms) was 0.081%
- 4% reported it was a newsletter (3% only reported a newsletter)
The equation if you have a solid email list
If you’ve spent time building your email list and want to get a sense of where you’re at, generally, with crowdfunding, here’s the math:
15% of your total email list x $25 (the average crowdfunding pledge) = 50% of your minimum viable crowdfunding goal
This is a obviously a generous email conversion rate estimate (15%), so adjust that number if you feel that’s more accurate to your reality, and if you have additional info about the average expected crowdfunding pledge for the majority of your audience, adjust that as well. The reason I only say you need to account for 50% of your crowdfunding goal is because once you hit that number it’s a lot easier to get people from other places than strictly your email list to pay attention and get involved. People want to support a success, so you need to have a confident accounting of a portion of that success to convince them.
The equation if you only know your minimum viable goal
If you know what you need to raise and are curious how your email list stacks up, or how much more audience building you need to do, here’s that math:
Minimum viable crowdfunding goal / $7.50 = Your total ideal email list
This equation also assumes a 15% conversion rate for your email list and an expected average pledge of $25/person.
Oh no :(
Don’t panic! All is not lost if the math isn’t mathing for you!
Consider staged financing rather than one fell swoop
Crowdfunding more than once for the same project, spaced out over the course of the film’s production phases, has been a viable option for many people. The process of filmmaking takes a while, so there’s no reason financing can’t follow the same pattern. Often, you’ll raise more money this way, because you’ve given yourself more time and space to build trust, credibility, and audience. Also, giving yourself extra time to raise money opens up other financing opportunities: grants, sponsors, in-kind partnerships, etc, to fill that funding gap.
Build up your team
It’s not rocket science: the more people sending emails on your behalf, the more realistic larger goals becomes. This is why it’s so important to focus on outreach and building your team year-round, even when you’re not actively crowdfunding! Even better: recruit fans as street team members, or advocates of your campaign. People are far more likely to take actions that friends and people they already trust and respect introduce, even if those same actions, with the same results, are requested by another.
Go IRL
In person converts higher than any other form of outreach, so if you can find a way to get face-time with your audience, do it. It’s the same reason Girl Scouts still post up outside of grocery stores or bully their parents into taking an order form physically into work with them; there’s nothing like looking someone in the eye when asking for their help. Perhaps you can even host an event yourself!
You’ve got this. And if you still need extra support, I’ve got you.
Bri Castellini is an independent filmmaker, a romance author, and, regrettably, a podcaster. She’s known for the 2017 short film Ace and Anxious (writer/director, 165k+ views on YouTube) and for her podcasts Burn, Noticed and Breaking Out of Breaking In, covering the USA television show Burn Notice and practical filmmaking advice, respectively. She can lick her elbow (not clickbait). Full work history and ways to hire her as a consultant can be found on her website BriCastellini.com
