Hello, Hevrians.
As you may know, we’ve been working on an Indiegogo campaign.
As you may also know, we reached our goal in less than 5 days.
Almost everyone that gave to that campaign gave less than 50 dollars, and most gave even less than that. Some gave $1.
So we reached our goal in record time, with small donations.
That means only one thing to me: you care. You care enough that you’re willing to give even when it’s hard.
I messaged a lot of people during the first day, and so many people said, “Oh my gosh, Elad, I have no money, but I’ll give what I can.”
Do you have any idea how beautiful that is?
Do you have any clue how incredible that is?
Do you understand the significance?
If you don’t, let me lay it out for you. (And also, I don’t know where else to put this so I’m just going to say it: you have no idea the gratitude I feel today, looking back on your incredible support. Thank you.)
Hevria is trying to become a “startup”, but we will always be one thing at our core: a movement.
And in my heart of hearts, I always knew this movement mattered, that this invisible community of spiritual-creative Jews, spiritual-creative non-Jews who want to hear from us, and more existed. But there was always a part of me that wasn’t sure. That felt maybe it was just me and some weird friends.
But then I had the courage to start this campaign thanks to ROI and it just… happened. This movement proved itself.
Why?
Because of those small donations. Because people said, “Elad, I’m broke, but I’ll give anyway.”
That means that people believe in this idea, this idea of “positive spiritual creation” that somehow no one knows the meaning of when they come to me quizically and ask me, but then they somehow immediately connect to Hevria once they tap into what’s being positively spiritually created.
That means that our invisible community is real. And it is alive, and it is close to thriving.
Hevrians, I want to continue to the momentum. What we have is a chance here to push this further, and to gain more traction, not to slow down.
In order to do that, we’ve created a new goal. It’s to go from where we’re at now, a bit less than $10,000 and get us to $12,000. We have a bunch of things we can do with this extra money (we’ve become good penny-pinchers), and we’ve listed them on the campaign. For your convenience, I’ll list them here:
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.
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.
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.
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.
And there’s more. If we reach that goal, we’ll be giving a perk to every single person who donated to our campaign, including the earlier ones:
If we hit this goal, we’ll 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.
