UPDATE: We've reached our SECOND goal. But we can do EVEN more.
What a ride! With only a few days left, and the day before our anniversary, we hit our second goal of $12,000. THANK YOU SO MUCH. To everyone who gave, shared, commented. You are our heroes, seriously.
But being Hevrians, we can't help ourselves and want to see if we can shoot for the stars and hit a staggering $14,000 by the time this campaign ends on Friday.
Like I said in the video: incredible things are possible if we exceed our goal. We already did. We booked those tickets to Israel for our documentary. We're planning our next Hevria Sessions. We're looking into getting an editor. We'll be doing Hevria Live, as promised.
Now it's time for even more:
NEW GOAL: $14,000
What this will accomplish:
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Hevria Sessions CONCERT: You heard me. Not just the Hevria Sessions, but the Hevria Sessions LIVE. That means both an AWESOME video and, for anyone willing to come out to Brooklyn, a freaking live show, just like we dreamed up in the plans below. Oh, and we're going to add a perk for anyone who gives to be able to get into the show gratis, baby.
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A documentary series: We're currently in talks with an amazing filmmaker, someone we truly admire and who gets Hevria front and back. And they want to do a series for us, not just one documentary. We'd love to have the funding for that, and this will help us get that very series started. Can you imagine it? HBC. Hevria Broadcasting Company.
Another Perk For EVERYONE!
A video compilation of Hevria writers reading their favorite posts: Well, the above two things will probably take up our entire budget, for sure. But we can at least throw in this one more thing. A video effort done by as many Hevria writers as we can convince of them reading their favorite piece with you, our contributors. And if you're okay with it, maybe we'll share it with the world too.
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NEW GOAL: $12,000
What this will did accomplish:
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Hevria Sessions: Thanks to you, we funded the next 3 months of videos. After that, we’re on our own. If we hit our new goal, we’ll be able to film another 3 months of songs. If you don't know what these are, check out our first one featuring Levi Robin here.
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Our dream film: Now we can afford to make films! Yay! But, okay, the top film on our wish list is one we had to nix because it was too dang expensive. If we hit our new goal, we’ll be able to travel to Israel to film a documentary about settlers as you’ve never imagined them—extremist hippie settlers living on Israel’s disputed Green Line.
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Guest Posts and New Bloggers: As soon as we hit our first goal, we started working on functionality to expand the site to new writers and guest posts! But the more we make, the better—and bigger—this section can be.
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Longform Journalism: We want to pioneer long-form pieces and immersive stories that can hit hard, deep, and explore the untouched parts of the intersection of belief and creativity. Because of the research, time, and costs involved, we’d like to pay our writers. Our new goals will enable us to do that.
A Perk For EVERYONE!
If we hit this goal, not only will we be able to fund our new programs, but we’ll also invite everyone who gave to our campaign to a special night of "Hevria Live". Our writers, artists, and musicians will talk, perform onstage, and discuss how Hevria has impacted their worlds and their own lives.
If you’re in New York or can come here, you’ll get a free ticket just by being a backer at any level. If you’re not here, you’ll receive an exclusive way to watch it live on any computer, to participate in the event, and to view a recording afterward.
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Overview
My name is Elad Nehorai and I'm the creator of Hevria. You may also know me as the blogger Pop Chassid. What you may not know is what my dreams for Hevria truly are. I'm finally ready to share them with you.
Writing for Pop Chassid made me realize there is a community of Jews dying to connect to their Jewish souls in a way that no Jewish publication, website, or media has truly allowed them to do.
This community of Jews is both creative and spiritual. They are the people that read Pop Chassid and now Hevria. They are the ones who can't read what's out there because what's out there dries them up.
They are the ones who are also dying for more from the art they consume. They want the quality stuff to be spiritual and the spiritual stuff to be quality.
Hevria as it exists is a mirage of what it's meant to be. When I launched Hevria, I knew from the very beginning that we wouldn't just be a group blog, and that we were laying the groundwork to be something much more essential to the Jewish world. That we were going to be the VICE of the Jewish world. This, I believe, is my mission as a Jew, and Hevria's mission as a whole. To bring spiritual creativity to the masses.
So now I need your help: help me make Hevria what it's meant to be. Help me turn Hevria from a group blog into a full multi-media site devoted to empowering creative Jews and continuing to develop the audience and community we so love and feel connected to.
What We Need & What You Get
Thanks to the folks at ROI, our donations will be matched up to $4,500! That means that every dollar you give will count twice until we reach our goal of $9,000.
The beauty of this campaign is that both the ground and the sky are the limits. Every bit of money we raise can go towards something spectacular, and towards one of our major or minor projects. Here are a few of our projects and ideas that need funding either to start or to continue:
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The Hevria Sessions - Our Jewish take on "MTV Unplugged" highlighting up-and-coming Jewish musicians under the direction of the incredible Saul Sudin. Video is expensive and so every cent we have can help us make initiatives like this really have some steam.
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Hevria Mini Documentaries - Ever seen a VICE documentary? That's what we want to do. Original, high quality, beautiful documentaries that bring a spiritual, authentic light into the world. Imagine an up-close-and-personal view of what it means to be an Israeli settler or investigative reports into topics like whether anti-semitism is truly rising. These are just the beginnings of what we're planning to do.
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The Hevria Academy - We are in the beginning stages of launching an online school (featuring such incredible teachers as Rabbi Eliyahu Fink, Rachel Kann, and Stephanie Levine), which is part of our plan to make ourselves self-sustaining. With your funds we can make this happen, bring on more great teachers, and create even more unique courses you haven't seen anywhere else on the web.
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Live Shows - Imagine poetry slams, concerts, conferences, writing workshops, art classes. All of these things are possible, and the more we raise, the more likely they become.
There's also a bunch of structural work and help we need to fund, and every bit of your funding will help us achieve these goals:
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Staff - At this point, Hevria is completely volunteer-run. With funding, we can at the very least work with freelancers, if not start to actually build the foundations of a staff that runs Hevria. Without people completely behind it, and not just doing it on the side, Hevria will never reach its potential. And that will result in...
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Guest Posts! - We've had a huge demand for guest posts on Hevria since we launched. There is nothing, in all honesty, we want more. But to do that, we need an editor or someone on our team who can go through submissions. Your contributions will help us achieve the above which will help us cause this! Yay.
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Web work - By now you might have seen Hevria.Market, and, of course, our blog. What we need now is to work to integrate them, as well as our soon-to-launch Hevria Academy, into a much more cohesive whole. For that to happen, we need to push the boundaries of web design, something we haven't been able to do until now because we have only put our own money, time, and energy into it. With your help, Hevria could go from a group of beautiful sites and projects to a unique technology platform.
What happens if we reach our goal? We probably won't be able to do every single one of these things at once, but we can start to build the groundwork to make them all happen and to prioritize the things we really feel are essential.
What happens if we exceed our goal? Well, that's the idea of listing all the things we want to do here. We want you to imagine just how much can be done for the creative and spiritual Jewish community if Hevria is given the opportunity. We want you to know what we have in store. In other words, we want you to be a part of our dream. So, if our goal exceeds we'll be more empowered to make each one of these dreams a reality.
And what happens if we don't reach our goal? No biggie, guys. We'll just prioritize as we planned to in the beginning, just as we do now. We're used to not having so much funding (read: none) and doing a lot with that. Either way, we'll be thankful for your help and continue to work to make the dreams of the creative Jewish community come true.
The Impact
Imagine it. A site that moves beyond the stale establishment of old-era Jewish organizations. One that empowers both creators and the community/audience that surrounds it. One that thus has the power to change Jewry itself.
This is really our goal: to make the Jewish world a softer, sweeter, more open place. One where vulnerability is extolled and not ridiculed. Where creativity and spirituality aren't see at as in conflict but essential to each other, and where both are valued equally.
And yes, that all sounds very flighty. But I mean it, this is what Hevria is about. There's no other way to put it. Most of the actual, practical changes we'll make you can read above. This is about our true dream and mission.
If you want to feel just a tiny bit more grounded, here are some ways in which all this will actually happen.
- More writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, and other creatives getting empowered and given a voice through our platform.
- Finally, the ability to turn our site from a media site into a true community. Whether that means through technology or through actual community events.
- A powerful voice in Jewish media to combat the critics, the pundits, and the angry dividers.
Risks & Challenges
As always when it comes to a campaign like this, there are risks.
I would say this is our biggest one: we may not find a stable business model that will allow us to continue to funding's projects by the time we run out of the money. How do we plan to address that?
- This is my life's mission, and I believe the others in Hevria feel similarly. In other words, I will do whatever it takes to make this stable, and to make this big, for as long as I can. If we're meant to just going back to being a blog, I'm okay with that... but I don't think that's going to happen.
- We've been able to do quite a bit without funding. Although we know funding will help us, we will adapt, as we have.
- And in the meantime, I will be working on my other plans to get us on steady footing. If our business plan doesn't fall into place, I will be finding other means of funding, from loans to actual investments, to many other options.
The important thing about this campaign is to remember this: you are giving us time. And an opportunity we wouldn't have otherwise. Time to build the things we believe you want. And an opportunity to make those things happen without being constantly worried about the cost of what we do.
That is beautiful. And, in all honesty, my worries aren't so much financial but in living up to what you will have allowed us do with this opportunity.
Other Ways You Can Help
Don't forget, money isn't the only way you can help us with this campaign! What do I mean?
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SHARE SHARE SHARE! Yes, that's right, share this campaign like crazy. We can't get funding if people don't know this campaign exists.
- Literally tell your friends. Like, with your mouth. Like, not just your keyboard. Imagine! But you'll help us so much more with your mouth than you may realize. It's a beautiful instrument, and much more advanced than even an iPhone.
- Tell us that you care! Comment, send us messages, whatever! We want to just know that this campaign means something to you, even if you don't give. We want to know that we're not just shooting in the dark and that this is something you want, and not just us.
Love your faithful, pumped, grateful leader of Hevria,
Elad
