Raising Funds in VR
You’re not an Early Adopter any more but the field is not crowded, yet. Do it right, you can make a positive impact quickly and inexpensively.
The first step is de-conditioning. The main image of VR in popular culture is high-end-commodity-product, the next step beyond video games. With that image, it is hard for people not to see themselves as consumers of VR, not producers. It is also hard for most organizations to see themselves involved creatively unless they happen to be a well-heeled studio.
That is just one view of VR, a view obviously perpetuated by well-heeled studios or the social network companies that own them.
Virtual Reality is a media communications technology. Like everything from semaphore to cell phones, there are aspects of communications that VR is really good at and other aspects better left to other forms of media.
The ability to create a complete environment is the key differentiator for VR. We speak of sound creating an environment, which is certainly does.
But nothing creates an environment like, the environment, as in, the world your brain believes you are inhabiting. The feeling of immersive presence in another environment — that’s VR’s Super Power.
What helps convince the brain, and surprisingly it doesn’t take much, is interacting with another person in that new environment. The fact that someone else is there too, also buying into that same new environment and talking to you like everything is normal — the brain goes, ‘done, I’m here.’
If that doesn’t scream, ‘Fundraising,’ I don’t know what does.
Dramatize the benefit, bring alive the power of Your contribution.
How about being there?
That’s how I began my VR Fundraising work, in 2016, with the idea of letting donors and potential donors feel as if they are there, wherever there needs to be.
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DIY VR Content
There were not enough VR headsets around in 2016, or even now, to consider distribution. Any content would have to be used in a live event, in an adjunct capacity. I convinced Event organizers to let me offer a special show on the side, at gatherings where people would be interested in the material because it let them feel present with the work they were supporting.
Fortunately, in the good old days before pandemics, there were plenty of those gatherings.
The Khmer Magic Music Bus travels to remote villages in Cambodia to play live traditional music that two generations have not heard.
Art and music were major targets during the Khmer Rouge genocide, 1975–1979. Art and music have been major sources of strength for rebuilding since then.
Cambodian Living Arts has created a platform of services and support for artists in their country and the Khmer Magic Music Bus (KMMB)is one of its featured projects.
Cambodian Living Arts has supporters all over the world. When travel is possible, KMMB musicians perform live outside of Cambodia. After the performance there is always informal socializing . That’s when I set up the VR, off in a corner, as a separate experience.
During several previous KMMB road trips, I was on the Bus with my < $500 360 degree video camera and a tripod. When they set up their show and played in a village, I set up my video equipment and recorded.
A minute is about as long as most people are comfortable being inside a headset with other things going on around them in a public place. That makes content selection easy — find the best and most compelling two short clips and then show them to the people that wander over.
Of course it is not that simple. There are a few key factors, like having the Event MC, if there is one, announce that the VR experience will be available. But since live events are not so simple either, with the pandemic still going strong, we have been forced to think about VR and fundraising in different ways.
DIY VR Events
The pandemic didn’t just shut down fundraising events, it shut down most live entertainment, period. All over the world. Performers can’t perform.
The term ‘virtual’ has come to encompass anything online, anything not physically co-located. A Zoom class is referred to as a virtual class. However, the meaning of ‘virtual’ is not ‘distant,’ but ‘as if it is real.’ Zoom does not feel as if it is a real classroom. It feels like something very different trying to act like a real classroom.
In a virtual space, people feel present, as if they are in a real space. When artists perform on a virtual stage, people in the virtual seats feel like they are present in a theater with them. Virtual classrooms can feel like real world classrooms.
I know this from direct experience because the Khmer Magic Music Bus musicians have now put on seven hour-long live shows in VR, four in the summer and three in the fall of 2020.
They spoke, sang and played instruments in Phnom Penh and sent the audio over the internet into the Virtual Theater world. Their avatars were on-stage, moving and gesturing, apparently singing and telling stories.
There were over 25 attendees for each show. They enjoyed the music and learned about where it fit into Cambodia’s recent history. They took a chance on something that didn’t feature celebrities or familiar material.
There were a few friends-and-family, but most of the audience were drop-ins looking for something interesting. Many of them stayed until the end, from whenever they joined. The average duration was about 26 minutes, which is forever in a VR event where coming and going is frictionless.
It was a Free Event, but by the end we received a significant level of donations.
Online tip jars are becoming a common feature of Zoom and some VR events now and I assume they work. It didn’t feel like the right approach for this event.
The Khmer Magic Music Bus is a project with a purpose, a defined social benefit. Setting up the shows through Eventbrite provided a platform for describing the KMMB and for fundraising.
Making ‘The Khmer Magic Music Bus in VR’ a ticketed event made it feel different than a guitar player stepping up on open mic night. I love guitar players stepping up on open mic night, but very few of them are genocide survivors like KMMB’s co-founder, Arn Chorn-Pond.
Music saved his life. Now he tells stories of the old Master Artists, of people singing together today, and finding strength to rebuild a shattered society.
The whole world needs those songs now and the whole world can be there with the KMMB in VR.
It’s a wonderful true story and a little outreach allowed people to purchase a ticket just because they like us and what we were doing. Less than 10% of the people who bought tickets attended. Less than 10% of the people of attended bought tickets.
Plus side: We maximized exposure by making attendance free
Minus side: Probably not sustainable. I do not believe that non-attendees will support events, no matter how special, over and over and over.
But we need sustainability for artists to make a living..
DIY VR Worlds
The next shows will not be on a virtual traditional stage in a virtual traditional theater. They will be in Virtual Cambodia.
To produce an Event in VR, no technical skill is required. Templates are available for pre-built Worlds, like a theater or a conference room.
With modest technical skills, new worlds can be constructed out of pieces, like Legos. With modest media skills, the DIY content discussed earlier can be turned into Worlds or parts of Worlds.
World Builders who can code, make their own Legos and their own unique environments with both recorded, (JPG, MP4) and synthetic components.
It will be a stretch, but our team has just enough of these skills to produce our next Events in a sequence of venues all over virtual Cambodia.
I believe this is a sustainable model for a few obvious reasons:
- The world is always there, always On and always open to people. If attracting newcomers is a goal, a 24/7 presence is a big opening. It is not difficult in VR to delight newcomers as they enter and engage them in all the aspects you want to feature.
- Every aspect of the World is a project and every project has a name. Naming rights can be derived from funding support.
- The World is an endless source of good stories for someone else to write for you; it can lead to earned media.
- The World can host Events. Event-based VR fundraising is a subset of World-based VR fundraising. Events as I currently conceive of them use Tickets as the fundraising metaphor and fit into a Sanders-style, many-people-do-a-little approach. We have suggested a relatively low ticket price, but found in some cases that people chose to pay much more for their ticket. World projects would be built to last and would contain a lasting appreciation for supporters.
Multinational corporations, churches, and organizations of all sizes are establishing their initial Worlds in VR now. Rockwell Automation just finished a three-day event in their Virtual Automation Fair World. It was staffed two hours per day, a missed opportunity in my opinion.
Ever want to start from scratch and get things right? See the world or some part of it reborn as something new and better? World Building can be aspirational. Put your best forward.
Better yet, ask your supporters about the world you can all build together.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !
