Fandiem Says “F-COVID” Offering Unique Artist Experiences To Fans Who Donate To Support Musicians In Need

The live entertainment industry continues to innovate. This year has demonstrated new ways in which artists can offer special opportunities to fans as part of movement to raise ever greater amounts of money in support of charitable projects like Sweet Relief which supports musicians and others from the touring world in need.

Throughout Covid and still today, musicians and their supporting teams are suffering from the losses incurred when the world summarily shut down in March 2020. Fandiem builds upon its reputation within the artist community to gather unique and otherwise unobtainable experiences like onstage or backstage access or meet and greet time with artists well beyond the standard 30 seconds. The fan community enters sweepstakes by making donations and everybody goes home a winner.

Fandiem is a social enterprise business which co-founded by Jared Heiman, their current Chief Revenue Officer. The model is a platform which connects artists and the fans who seek either to support a particular cause or to purchase chances to win a particular prize. Fandiem’s team does the unseen work of working with artists to curate their offerings, marketing those opportunities to donors, fulfilling the prizes and the relentless cycle of creating a campaign, creating the content in support of each offering and replenishing the pipeline of future participation in which artists and fans return with more offerings and donations. Fandiem also facilitates campaigns by artists who seek to raise funds and awareness of their own foundations.

Fandiem is a charitable donation platform intended to support need in the ranks of live entertainment personnel, where fans donate to a charity which the artist choses. By donating, they are entered to win a variety of prizes from signed guitars to front row tickets.

The artists donating access or prizes to Fandiem are top notch across the board. It’s Metallica, Eric Church, Nine Inch Nails, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam and an endless list of others.

The Fandiem team has nine full-time employees engaged in growing this company. The average donation per entrant is $35 which reflects both the generosity of the donors and their desire to obtain the prize offered. There is a little bit of the fantasy element at play here. Most entrants understand they are not going to win the prize. But, like Schrodinger’s cat, in their mind the possibility of winning remains until the date they finally become aware they did not.

That period of time in which standing onstage or taking home the prize selected is a possibility which is fun to think about and discuss with friends. Is a small donation to an important cause worth the price of the donation? If that donation provides a month-long ability to picture yourself in the drumkit keeping time for your favorite band, the answer might be “yes” more often than you would think. This same phenomenon suggests that a donor to one campaign is quite likely to return and support a different campaign to once more think about what it would mean to win.

Jared is spearheading events which are marketed with surprising frankness, including the current F-COVID campaign. F-COVID is a joint arrangement with Sweet Relief and Bands in Town. In true rock and roll fashion, the logo for F-COVID has the “I” in Covid replaced by an extended middle finger. For branding purposes this is so much stronger than the old standard “there is no “I” in team.”

Each artist on the lineup poster is offering a prize. Fans select which prize they wish to win. The model is a sweepstakes meets a fundraiser.

This is not an auction format, it’s more like a sweepstake. The more you donate, the greater your chance of winning a prize. This equalizes access, rather than every prize going whoever has enough disposable income to buy the prize.

The draw is made by Fandiem’s back-end system. The fan gets a certain number of points for each dollar donated. The system randomly selects the winner. Then, providing the winner agrees to accept the prize, Fandiem connects the winner with the artists to make arrangements to receive their prize.

There could be tax consequences for the winners. The donation made to enter the contest might be a write-off depending on the way in which you file taxes. Fandiem’s posture is the prize is a gift from the artist with no tax owed. This is something to review with your accountant, but only after you join Fandiem’s community, enter one or several of their draws and go ahead and win.

Some prizes include travel to an event. Those prizes are usually awarded ten days in advance of the event so there is time to finalize flights and hotels

The world of fundraising is always interesting. Attached in audio and video formats is the podcast I did with Jared Heiman. He explains how Fandiem puts together these offerings and why. It’s a good listen.

Last year Fandiem grossed approximately $1.5 million in donations from their fundraising campaigns. They launched with the idea of democratizing the process of having a unique experience. In the past year they launched more than sixty campaigns while gathering a data base of ongoing donors and greater awareness among artists. This year’s projections are much higher in part because this model tends to scale awareness quickly as those who obtained last year’s special prizes made sure everyone knew what they’d won and similarly as word spread among artists donating prizes that Fandiem is a trusted space for them.

Next year looks even more interesting as Fandiem moves to incorporate NFTs as part of their next wave while they concurrently broaden their offerings beyond music to include creators, athletes and otherws who have a fanbase and a presence.

Any project which promotes charitable donations and responsibly distributes the funds collected is worth supporting. Fandiem has built a very attractive proposition: give some money and have a chance at something that no one else you know will experience. There is a premium for uniqueness. Fandiem monetizes that premium and by itself or in collaboration with partners distributes the profits to worthy recipients. One of their next campaigns involves VIP tickets to see Metallica at BottleRock over Memorial Day weekend. After they play “Enter Sandman” at least one lucky winner will sleep well that night knowing their donation went to help someone in need.