ROCK THE CONGO — October 15th – December 10th 2014
by Nicco Bechtler, Campaign Writer
OPERAnauts, Inc. is a Princeton-based non-profit organization that aims to use music to better the world, specifically the unfortunate situation currently unfolding in Congo. It was because of this fantastic goal that I decided to devote many hours over the past three months to helping OPERAnauts succeed.
In the beginning of October, we began to work on preparing an online crowd sourcing campaign to raise money for one of the organization’s targets: Allowing five of Congo’s best aspiring musicians to travel to the United States to be mentored on the opera “La Petite Carmen.” To do this, we set up a page on Indiegogo, an internet crowd funding site, and set to work creating a campaign. This included photography, video, text, and art, as well as constant updates required to provide visitors to the webpage with the latest information. My role in the project was to write. Language is something that has fascinated me from my early memories of reading Dr. Suess, so it seemed like a natural fit. The depth of literary finesse required to be an internet wordsmith proved to be quite a challenge, resulting in many nights staying up far past when I should have just to find that perfect phrasing for an update, but I enjoyed it all nonetheless. It wasn’t easy, but I learned some valuable information about myself as a student of English, as well as improving my writing and what I can accomplish with it.
When it was all said and done, we had both a visually and statistically brilliant campaign, which we called “Rock the Congo.” It was professional and sleek, but still retained the homegrown, “do it yourself” aesthetic that OPERAnauts has made its signature. True perfection may be unattainable, but for a small company run from a little town in central Jersey, we came as near to it as was in our power. When something needed to be fixed, we learned how, and did it. There was no outside help from graphic designers, or videographers, or any professional in a field other than music. We are a group of artists and students who, using only what was readily available to us, made an excellent project and raised a substantial amount of money to help Congolese musicians with their travels to the US and their English courses. Though we did not meet the extremely optimistic monetary goal we set at the campaign’s launch, as I will explain later, the definition of success in a crowd funding campaign is much more complicated than that. I feel that even without reaching the dollar amount we sought, the project was a great success, not just for me, but for the company as a whole and for everyone involved.
To view our campaign http://igg.me/at/operanauts
When the project had ended and I was taking care of the “postmortem” analysis of what happened I had some time to consider what success really was in the context of a fundraiser versus what it meant to the company as a whole, as well as to me. To the campaign, missing the goal is the definition of failure, so in that sense, despite our best efforts, we did not succeed. For the whole organization, or for me, however, it was more complicated. To the company, it broadened the audience reached by many thousands of people and expanded the community to include a youth program and more volunteers who want to see the Congo assisted, as well as more Congolese Fellows who want to work with OPERAnauts. To me, it was more. I have gotten to know some truly fascinating people with unbelievable stories of overcoming impossible difficulties in Congo and learning to play instruments excellently. I have broadened my understanding of global issues, like hunger and the unceasing and intense brutality that has plagued Congo for decades. I know how hard it can be to run a nonprofit and what it really takes to write the campaigns that get donations coming in. It was an incredible challenge, but I took countless new experiences and understandings away from it and I’m extremely grateful for that opportunity.