The Crowdfunding Success Stories of Navicula in Patungan and Kickstarter

Remember my report on a crowdfunding project by Navicula, a band from Bali? In that report, I predicted that Navicula would succeed in collecting the funding through crowdfunding in Patungan and would need extra promotional effort for the crowdfunding in Kickstarter to meet the deadline. It turns out, both crowdfunding effort finally succeeded.

At Kickstarter, until Wednesday night when this article is written or 10 days before the deadline, Navicula managed to collect USD3.127 from the targeted USD3,000. At Patungan, which deadline was last Tuesday, Navicula was supported by 19 donors and collected IDR5,130,000 from the targeted IDR5,000,000.

Thus, Navicula will be able to realize their Borneo tour and organize a concert to raise people’s awareness of Orang Utan directly in the habitat of Orang Utan. According to Robi, Navicula’s vocalist, the tour will be held until mid September.

Initially, the idea to fund Navicula’s Borneo tour project came from Alfred Pasifico, Navicula’s publicist. Crowdfunding concept becomes the solution of the funding difficulties experienced by Navicula as a band which promotes environmental issues to do a tour to Borneo. The crowdfunding concept is prepared with close observation to Kickstarter’s provisions; among them is that a project must have certain goal such as creating an album and not a social project (charity).

Kickstarter also requires an American bank account and American address as well as phone number. For that purpose, Navicula used their friend slash Eco-Tour Manager, Gove dePuy’s account. The presentation of the project was carefully prepared to pass Kickstarter’s selection.

Their effort succeeded when their project made it through the selection on Kickstarter. To gain support from local community, especially their fans, they opened the same crowdfunding project on Patungan.net. They were sure the project at Patungan would be able to gather many supporters but with not so many fund. Therefore, they only targeted IDR5,000,000 at Patungan.

Navicula’s Promotional Effort

Certainly, IDR5,000,000 won’t be able to pay for a tour to Borneo if the crowdfunding project at Kickstarter does not succeed. Therefore, Navicula’s next effort is to promote their crowdfunding to the public. The effort is classified into three ways.

First, Navicula seeked help from several ‘Kickstarterian’ fellows (people who understand and had made a project at Kickstarter and succeeded) to support and spread information about Navicula’s crowdfunding project through their social networks. It happens to be that many Kickstarterian live, or used to live, in Bali and Navicula also happens to know them, such as Daniel Ziv, Soma Helmi, Sue Useem. According to Navicula, this is important to socialize about what is crowdfunding. It turns out, other than spreading information, these Kickstarterian also supported Navicula’s project.

Seconf, Navicula promoted their project only to their fans but also to closest friends who can see that the idea has good intent and worthy of support. Next, Navicula also promoted their idea to social media.

One of the realization of Navicula’s promotional effort is through offline presentation. This activity is proven effective because the night after Robi’s presentation in Ubud, Navicula’s project gained another support to the amount of USD1,400.

Psychological Number

After getting through the number that Navicula called as psychological number, USD1000, Navicula found that people easily gave their support of the project which previously felt to move slowly. Once, when the number reached USD3,000, someone gave their support worth USD1000 without demanding any reward. After the number reached USD2500, the progress was rapid so Navicula’s project at Kickstarter managed to meet the target after 14 days since launched.

Navicula is a band from Bali which loyal to environmental issue. Until today, they had produced six albums. Recently, Navicula won the Planetrox Indonesia competition which bring them to represent Indonesia for the “Envol et Macadam” international festival at Quebec, Kanada on September.

In addition, Navicula is also one of the 10 finalists of RØDE Rocks international competition. In the video clip competition which offered a price of recording in Hollywood, Navicula’s Metropolutan video clip managed to eliminate other 500 participants from 43 countries. Navicula admits that managing a crowfunding promotional program amongst the many programs of their band is not easy. But looking at the result, their effort are not wasted.