TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List Launches Campaign on IndieGoGo to Fund New Website

PADUCAH, KY, May 29, 2011

TAFA's mission, "Markets for Members", uses social media as a key strategy to find new audiences. Our members, working artists and small businesses that work with handmade textiles and related products, tend to be women over 50. Interesting, as that is also the fastest growing population joining the social media bandwagon. Many of them struggle to navigate between the demands of their businesses and the time they need to dedicate networking online. TAFA helps them with that, bringing their online presence to one place on their member profile and synchronizing automated updates and posts they generate.

Now we want to invest in a website that can also highlight the products that they make. The new site will have a powerful search engine delivering image-based results. Users will be able to search for products based on techniques, materials, location and through other search categories. In researching how to generate the capital for this project, crowd funding seemed the most democratic and efficient way to move towards our dream site.

There are many crowd funders out there now, but we chose IndieGoGo because they are big, allow fundraisers for websites, release the funds as they are given, have an attractive platform, and seemed like a good match. The downside is that they keep 9% of the funds, unless we meet our $5,000 goal. If we do that by the end of the campaign in two months, they will refund 5%.

Activity on our page helps move us to the front of the site, which may help us be seen by donors who like to support the site. Of course, we want donations, but comments and a show of support are also helpful. TAFA members have donated $825 to date and we are hoping to attract supporters outside of our normal audience who like what we are doing. TAFA members have also donated art work and discounts as rewards for donors. They can be seen on this page: http://www.tafalist.com/p/indiegogo-campaign.html

Join us as we move forward to fulfill our mission! We have been pleased with IndieGoGo as a model of a new funding approach and hope to report success at the end of our campaign.

TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List is a membership group of fiber artists and textile related businesses who produce contemporary and traditional handmade goods. For more information, visit us at http://www.tafalist.com/p/about.html.