Meta: Beyond The Blog- Need Your Input

Normally, this is the time of year when we take a week to do our bi-annual fundraising drive.We still might do that at a later date, but we're facing some new challenges and I want to get the input of our regular readers regarding the best way to address them. There are no pictures in this post, but if you value what we provide here, you'll read every word. This may be the most important post I've ever written.

From the very beginning, the Animation Archive project has been navigating uncharted territory. In the past, collections were organized in physical warehouses and history was published in books... But new technology demands new approaches. Today, we aim to organize large amounts of information in databases, and our commentary and analysis is presented in a blog, not a published physical book or magazine. We need to continue to think on our feet to be able to make this new process work.

Currently, there are two challenges to be addressed... The first one is purely practical. How do we insure that our progress continues to expand the way it has over the past two and a half years? Our rate of growth is governed by three things: the archival material contributed for digitization, the "sweat equity" provided by our volunteers, and cash flow. Thanks to great people like Mike Fontanelli, Marc Schimeister, Kent Butterworth and John Kricfalusi, we have more material in for digitization than we can keep up with. Dedicated volunteers like Gemma Ross, Kelsey Sorge-Toomey, JoJo Baptista and Alex Camarillo have made tremendous contributions in building out the structure of the collection. The chief problem we face is the same challenge many organizations face... How do we finance growth?

At this point, 95% of the sustaining budget for the Archive comes from contributors to our physical location... the Archive office in Burbank. The Walter Lantz Foundation, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Dreamworks Animation have provided grants and equipment to keep the doors open. We also receive funding from the thousands of general members of ASIFA-Hollywood, most of whom reside in Southern California. But although the contributions we have received through the PayPal link on the website are greatly appreciated, they don't come close to supporting the large amount of material we provide on the internet. We receive very little in the way of digitized contributions, volunteer help or funding from our internet readers- most of our support comes from people who have an interest the Archive facilities in Burbank. But I spend nearly half my time preparing material for the blog. That imbalanced division of resources just isn't fair.

The second challenge is conceptual... We're moving towards providing something entirely different on the internet than what we originally envisioned. When I first started this blog, my intent was simply to report on the progress of the project. But the postings here in the last year or so have gone far beyond that. The blog has become an important tool for distributing the information we are collecting. As the focus has shifted, my posts have become more in depth. The series of posts on Grim Natwick, Gustaf Tenggren and Milt Gross essentially constituted books, written "straight ahead" chapter by chapter as blog posts. I'm currently working on two more series that will prove to be just as comprehensive... Writing For Cartoons and a reappraisal of the art of Al Capp.

The other day, I went back and looked at the first post on Al Capp, and I realized that to fully absorb all the information there, it would take the better part of an hour. Most blogs, like Cartoon Brew and Boing-Boing are broken into bite sized chunks designed to take no longer than three minutes to read. What I'm creating here is evolving beyond being just another animation blog. I need your help to define what you want that to be.

Our primary purpose at the Archive is the creation of the Animation Database. Currently, our database contains over 3,000 animated cartoons and 40,000 high resolution scans. It would be ideal to be able to provide all of that material online, but the database currently measures in the terabytes. Serving all of that would require technical and financial resources that aren't even on the horizon yet. We need to come up with an achievable plan to work towards that goal.

The question to be answered is simple...

How do we increase the level of participation of the internet community through contributions of digitized material, volunteer labor and monetary donations?

I'm going to throw out a few ideas as suggestions. I would like to hear your opinions on these options. If you have any ideas, please feel free to offer them in the comments below.

1.) SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

Shane Glines' excellent Cartoon Retro site provides lots of material to subscribers behind a password gate. Users pay a monthly fee for access. This blog could shift to providing short teasers for larger scale content behind the subscriber wall. If the subscriber base and subscription cost was high enough, we could eventually serve up significant chunks of the Archive Database.

2.) SALES BASED SUPPORT

We recently offered an eBook of Zim's Cartoons and Caricatures. The proceeds funded the purchase of a 1.5 TB hard drive, which was pretty good for a start. Every month, we could have a different digital product for sale, or provide subscriptions to packages of products, delivered over the course of a year.

3.) ADVERTISING BASED FUNDING

We've been struggling with this option for some time without a great deal of success. Currently, we receive about $100 a month from our banner advertising- not nearly enough to be able to fund content creation. In fact, when the banners were installed, traffic fell 10% and continues to be sluggish. I believe the advertising is an annoyance to many viewers.

4.) SOLICITATION OF DIRECT DONATIONS

We have been struggling with this model for the past couple of years as well. Every six months we do a "pledge drive" where we outline our accomplishments and ask for support. Response has been below the level we need to continue to grow the project. I've avoided doing more than two pledge drives a year to keep the focus on the project, not fundraising. I doubt if we could increase that without alienating our readers.

5.) REPURPOSING CONTENT

We currently have over 500 articles in our archive of posts. Although we provide related links at the bottom of each post and maintain a jump page with links to every post organized by subject, I don't think many readers are using them. If I reduced the number of new posts I do each week and filled in with "reruns", I could continue the blog pretty much the same as it is now.

6.) DIGITAL VOLUNTEERS

I have been trying to encourage readers to help build out the biographies in our Cartoon Hall of Fame. However the lion's share of the biographies there have been written by local animation students from ASIFA-Hollywood Board member, Larry Loc's classes. I would welcome ideas for how to get more volunteer support from the internet readers.

7.) DIGITIZED CONTRIBUTIONS

Every day, I see posts around the "blogosphere" with wonderful scans of articles, illustrations and artwork that would be terrific additions to our collection. I have contacted many of these bloggers asking that they scan at archival resolutions and contribute their images to the Animation Database. Very few of them do this. I would welcome ideas for how to encourage more digital contributions.

Those are the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head lately. I would appreciate your suggestions. If you consider this blog to be a valuable resource, please take the time to add your own thoughts to the comments below.

Thank you
Stephen Worth
Director
ASIFA-Hollywood
Animation Archive
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