WE MADE IT! 100% Crowdfund Campaign Secured!

We are happy to report that we MADE IT 100% secured!

Our first crowdfund campaign ever, and it was a success! We raised €7,826 in total and more then €1000,- via our website directly.

Without you, this wouldn’t be possible. So, we want to thank you so much for your effort and for supporting our campaign. It was quite the journey.

Especially because this was our very first crowdfunding campaign. We learned so much during this campaign and there were many challenges we had to face.There are so many people interested in fixing the climate, in eradicating poverty, in changing the system, and yes, even in Basic Income. But to reach all those people and let them see the value in a big picture documentary about how UBI has the potential to change the system is a much bigger task.

1.5 months before we started our campaign on the first of May 2024, we met Ilia ten Böhmer from We Are Nami. He helped us craft the social media campaign. We wanted to launch on the first of May, because it was the day of international basic income.

Downside; it would mean that we only had 1.5 months to prepare and to build a social media audience, newsletters etc. Despite this, we are proud of the achievements and the next time will go a lot better and more smooth.

Our journey so far
The first year I dedicated to setting up the Happiness Economy Foundation. Searching for people wanting to help me with this vision. Crafting the story and the message.

The second year I met Chiel Epskamp, who is my partner in this documentary/project.Together we crafted the story and started to interview the year after, which was last year.

We both did the interviews and the film work. That way we kept the costs low. We went to Berlin, Bath in the UK and London for the interviews we did so far, and also a few in The Netherlands.

With the 8 interviews we conducted we decided to edit a crowdfunding trailer for this campaign. That led to the crowdfunding trailer you saw on our campaign.

And in the last week of the campaign we decided last minute to record the launch video to breathe some new life into the campaign. Which we can say that it worked.

So what now?
If you have followed our campaign and our story, the documentary has basically two layers:

– Expert Interviews
– Pilot Program of UBI interviews and results

And then there are two categories of effects:

– Western world
– Non-western world

The effects in Sweden for example, are much more about happiness increase, trust increase, etc. In Namibia the effects were drastically different. Here the effects were a drop of 43% in criminality, including poaching which is a more direct effect of the health of our planet.

Giving people cash so they don’t have to kill wildlife, is a big deal for the health of our planet. And this is the bigger story of UBI.

Combining the Western and Non-Western stories, we can tell the real impact story of UBI.We will now focus on the non-western world results of the pilot programs. Interviewing experts and the people in the pilot programs.It’s heartwarming to see so much engagement around UBI and help us reach our goal!

If you want to support us in the future, you can become a regular donor too to keep the foundation up and running and expand our team to work on this project.

But for now, thank you so much!!

With much love,

Aaldrik, Chiel & Ilia