We began researching crowd funding campaign sites in early 2018, comparing Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, etc. We finally settled on FRACTURED ATLAS – which was recommended to us by our good friend and collaborator Barbara Proud – who’d worked with them to raise funds for her beautiful First Comes Love project. In addition to hosting crowd funding campaigns, Fractured Atlas serves as an ongoing non-profit umbrella for their member artists.
Designing and planning our Amazing Queer Songbook fundraising campaign took months – including writing a proposal, preparing a budget, shooting a promotional video, and deciding on contribution levels and rewards. We initially decided to ask for $25,000. to cover the costs of space and equipment rentals, fairly compensate all of the artists who would be involved, and build a website to share our Songbook.
After contributions began to arrive (hallelujah!) we sent our supporters their rewards – which included a post card featuring a great photo of the two of us from 2002 by photographer Jon Stark, lead sheets for our Songbook songs, and ceramic vases handmade and collaged by Michael with pieces of the piano/vocal score from our song There is A River.
We’re tremendously grateful to the nearly 100 individuals who generously chose to support us – some who asked to remain anonymous and all the others listed on the THANKS page of this website. We’re also extremely grateful for the support we received from the Gerald Cain and Scott James Charitable Fund of San Francisco.
Although we didn’t quite reach our $25,000 goal, we raised nearly $20,000 which supported the filming of 11 of our songs and the launch of this site. Once we release this first group of films we’ll seek to raise additional funds to film our remaining Songbook songs: including our pride anthem WHAT WE BELIEVE IS RIGHT – which we wrote for and performed at the 1993 March on DC for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights, LAST NIGHT – a 1970’s cruising song from our first musical X-POSED, and the celebratory ensemble piece Q – as well as several of our favorite theatrical love songs: including THESE SIMPLE WORDS from Breathe and THE KISS from The Cousins Grimm.
Photo by Rikki Ercoli, 1986