AniFem Fundraiser and Site Update: March 2020

March has been low on reasons to celebrate (to say the least), but here’s a small one for our readers: AniFem’s first-ever fundraiser has officially completed all its major tasks! 

So here’s a long-distance digital toast to the teammates and contractors who worked so hard to make this happen, as well as the supporters who made this possible in the first place. We truly couldn’t have done it without all of you. Cheers, AniFam!

Fundraiser Finale

Perks Progress

All the perks have been shipped out! We did it, y’all! 

…Well, with one small asterisk, anyway:

To our international backers in Europe and Canada: It will be at least a few more weeks until you receive your packages. To help keep shipping costs manageable, we routed the packages through a colleague in those regions, who will then be sending them along to the proper addresses. 

That said, we live in uncertain times and the safety of our teammates remains our top priority, so if health professionals advise against post office visits in those regions, we will delay shipments until it is safe and responsible to do so. As such, our previous “expect your perks within three months” estimate likely still holds for folks in Europe and Canada.

To everyone else: Your perks are on their way! If any packages bounce back to us, we will contact you directly via the email attached to your Indiegogo donation to resolve the issue. If you have any other concerns, please shoot us a message and we’ll do our best to get it worked out for you.

Podcast Transcripts

We’ve also published another good-sized batch of transcripts this month:

• Chatty AF 37: Fall 2017 wrap-up
• Chatty AF 38: DEVILMAN crybaby Retrospective
• Chatty AF 39: Fushigi Yugi Watchalong – OVAs (Part 1 of 2)
• Chatty AF 40: Fushigi Yugi Watchalong – OVAs (Part 2 of 2)
• Chatty AF 41: Miss Hokusai Retrospective
• Chatty AF 42: Winter 2018 Mid-Season Check-in

A Note on the Online Shop

This was a stretch goal we didn’t actually make, but it’s one we know some folks were excited about, so we did want to touch on it real quick.

Our initial plan was that we would use any leftover funding to create a simpler version of the shop with a smaller line of products, and then expand from there. This is still the plan, but we need to handle administrative expenses (taxes, then staff payments) before we know how much (if any) additional finances we’ll have to work with.

We’ll have a better idea of what an online shop will look like in another couple months. As always, we thank you for your patience and promise to keep you posted on updates as soon as we have them.

Onwards and Upwards

Since the only outstanding fundraiser goal is completing the transcripts, this will be the last regularly scheduled monthly Fundraiser Update (for now, anyway). We’ll continue to publish new transcripts at least once a week. As always, you can track our updates on Twitter @AnimeFeminist.

We have lots of future ideas and were initially going to tell you about some of them once we’d wrapped up our major fundraiser goals… but in light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, we thought we’d just enjoy this hard-earned accomplishment for now and not worry about stressing anyone out with new projects quite yet.

The pandemic has disrupted just about everyone’s lives and livelihoods in one way or another, including our team members, and we expect the next few months to pose challenges for our staff and supporters alike. Since the “AniFem office” has always been online, right now our plan is to keep the same publication schedule of articles and podcasts as we did before—but if that needs to change, whether for medical or financial reasons, we’ll be sure to let you know with the same honesty we’ve offered in these monthly updates.

In the midst of so much uncertainty, isolation, and stress, it’s important to have something to look forward to. We hope the conversations on both our site and our Discord server can at least offer little islands of geeky normalcy for our followers in the coming months.

Thanks again for your support, AniFam, and know that it’s appreciated now more than ever. Y’all take care out there.