Independent journalist Tom Roston checks in and writes about the world of documentaries in his column, Doc Soup.
A few weeks ago, I spoke with Tod Lending, director of The Principal Story, about how he hit the jackpot by getting money from the Wallace Foundation to make a series of nonfiction films. I asked him if there were other goldmines for filmmakersout there, and he directed me to Alyce Myatt, the head of Grantmakers in Film + Electronic Media (GFEM). I just caught up with Myatt — and while she may not actually be sitting on a mountain of gold coins, she did impress me with GFEM's incredible resource: a database of films that allows foundations to find a project that they may be interested in. It's fascinating to peruse through the various projects and see what sort of financing has been achieved, and what's still needed. Read our conversation below, and make sure to check out the database at media.gfem.org.
Doc Soup: So, is there foundation money out there for documentary filmmakers?
Alice Myatt: The short answer is yes . . . and no.
Doc Soup: That sounds like the beginning of a very long answer.
Myatt: What's been happening is that just as there has been an evolution in technology and media, there's also been an evolution in philanthropy. There's been a generation of wealth in the last couple of decades, so you have a greater number of relatively new family foundations with living donors and some of whom are entering the media sector and are funding films. But they're not doing it at the same degree as grants that were made by the Ford Foundation or MacArthur. So, 20 years ago, you could get $250,000 from Ford, but now that $250,000 is coming from various grants pieced together.
Doc Soup: Can you tell me some of the names of the family foundations you're talking about?
Myatt: Chicken and Egg, Cinereach, the Fledgling Fund.
Doc Soup: Is the recession inhibiting this sort of funding?
Myatt: It has had an impact across the board. If you are a large foundation, if you go from $7 billion to $4 billion, you still have $4 billion. However, the same anxiety that permeates society as a whole, extends to everyone. And what happens is that philanthropies want [to keep] their long-term grantees going. In some instances, they have raised their payout sometimes as high as 9 percent, so that they can honor the commitments because they don't want these organizations to fail. So a new film project has a harder time because of these ongoing commitments.
Read more about GFEM and funding for docs after the jump...
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TAGS: financing, foundations, fundraising