Ted Leo, Kickstarter, and the Case for Community Engagement
I found inspiration in an unexpected, yet unsurprising place today.
If you have never heard of Ted Leo, he launched a Kickstarter campaign this morning that met its $85,000 goal in just under 12 hours. Last I checked, the total raised (another $5,000 since I started writing this) was showing no signs of slowing down.
You might think it’s because so many people love his music — they do, I do — but that’s not the whole story. And any Ted Leo fan would tell you that.
For more than twenty years, I’ve watched Ted live life and make music with an unwavering commitment to his values. From making music that is accessible to all through all ages shows, to writing songs that speak truth to power, to making career decisions that put other people — his community — ahead of his own economic interests. He is a person of unimpeachable integrity. Any Ted Leo fan would tell you that you don’t just love Ted Leo’s music. You love who he is as a person. You cannot divorce the music from the values that created it, because the two are inextricably linked.
When I talk to journalists and other Dodge Foundation grantees across our program areas about the value and importance of community engagement to their bottom line, the two reactions I get the most are, “Ok, but how does engagement actually translate to money?” and [Roll eyes when they think I’m not looking]. In other words, skepticism that is, at best, oblivious to and, at worst, dismissive of the public’s intelligence, experience, and intense desire to participate and feel like they belong to something bigger than themselves.
I say this time and again: people have a finely-tuned radar for who is on their side and who is not. You cannot fool them. How well you treat and believe in your community, and how willing you are to share power and co-create with them directly relates to how much they will reward and invest in you.
You don’t have to believe me, because Ted Leo proves this. Go to his Kickstarter campaign and hit the refresh button. As I write this, he’s raised $94,000 in 14 hours — that’s yet another $4,000 since the last time I mentioned the total. Could you do the same with your organization? Have you built a community that would show such an enthusiastic and sustained outpouring of love and support for you?
If so, bravo to you. If not, be more like Ted Leo.
“Ted Leo is the man. Ask anybody.” — “We Owe You Nothing. Punk Planet: the Collected Interviews”
