As I mentioned previously, I tried my hand at filling out a CMF application more or less “for real” this year. There were a couple of things, as I mentioned on Twitter, that threw me for a loop, and since I actually got some feedback from the lovely helpful folks at CMF, I figured I’d share:
- The “Material to be Delivered for this Application” section does, as I suspected, refer to the end result/output from the project. For Conceptualization – particularly if the project is intended to proceed to Prototyping or a production program – that would almost certainly be a proof of concept and perhaps some supporting documentation around market and creative strategies
- As I also suspected, having no paid team members committed to the project is going to be a serious drawback for an application for funding. The response I got also indicated that they recommend you pay yourself as well as other team members, so that’s good to know, I s’pose. Not like I DON’T want money, just seems somewhat counterproductive to getting the most out of the investment. I suspect that my situation is at least somewhat abnormal in the overall audience for these programs, however.
- They recommended to me that I look for at least a “soft commit” from other folks, and also suggested that if those folks aren’t able to fulfill that commitment after a successful application it would be ok to proceed with someone else filling that role. So that’s actually really good to know.
Anyway, I thought those were worth sharing. I’ve also started to do some foundational research for Powered A(r)mour, but that’s still in very early stages, so not much to talk about just yet.
