How to Find Funding For Your Documentary

Grants and incentives are two potential sources of documentary funding.

Making a documentary film can be a very exciting undertaking, but it can also be very expensive. Although documentaries are not as expensive as a feature film, which can cost tens of millions of dollars, it's not unusual for a documentary to cost $1 million to produce. And anyone who doesn't have that amount of money lying around has to find investors in the film. Family and friends can be potential investors, and money might also be found via combination of grants, incentives, and other methods.

Instructions

1. Ask family and friends. If you have a strong network of financially stable relatives and close friends, ask them to support your project by helping to fund it. Multiple donations of anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars can go a long way. Also ask members of your network of friends and acquaintances if they know others who might be willing to invest in the documentary.

2. Apply for funding grants. Check the Foundation Center's website to find entities that bestow grants on documentary projects, and file grant request letter with each. Also check with the website of the International Documentary Association, which has a large online database of grant-issuing organizations. The database includes organizations' names, street addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, websites, and deadline for applying.

3. Seek out government incentives. There are a handful of U.S. states that have a small but growing film industry, and offer incentives to filmmakers to shoot within their borders. The incentives, which mostly are in the form of rebates, are primarily aimed at feature films, but can also apply to documentaries under certain circumstances. Check with the film bureau in the sate where you will film to find out what, if any, incentives they offer.

4. Hire a film broker, if you can afford it. A person or agency that professionally finds funding for documentaries can help free a filmmaker's time up. However, a broker should only be paid if, or when, he finds investors, so no upfront fee should be given. The standard agreement is that a broker will receive between 2 and 5 percent of any money that he raises for the project.