Bringing our FlyGirls to life takes a village. Exposé: Kathleen Minogue.

“When Matia Karrell first told me about the Fly Girls project, I remembering thinking THIS is what crowdfunding is made for: getting stories told that need to be told. And who better to tell this story than a veteran film director who has been carrying these stories in her heart for over 25 years. I am grateful to Matia and the Fly Girls team for having the courage to lead the charge to tell the WASP stories in the epic format they deserve.”

*Interesting women & crowdfunding stat: "According to The Crowdfunding Center in the UK, women succeed at crowdfunding 28% of the time. Men only 19% of the time.” The reason? A recent study indicates that it is the way we communicate. Women tend to use language that is more relationship-focused rather than financially-focused in their campaigns, and this creates better connections with crowdfunding backers. 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240.0"] Kathleen Minogue [/caption]

Kathleen Minogue
Founder, Crowdfund Better
Crowdfunding Educator, Speaker & Coach
www.crowdfundbetter.com

Kathleen Minogue educates and guides entrepreneurs, creative artists, nonprofits, and small businesses on how to use relationship-focused crowdfunding strategically to help them attain their financial, marketing, and business goals. She is particularly focused on crowdfunding education initiatives that encourage entrepreneurship, economic development, and job creation for local communities, women, and minorities. 

After running her own successful crowdfunding campaign in 2012, Kathleen invested time behind the scenes with the creators and executives of major and niche alternative funding platforms to understand crowdfunding from the inside out. She has worked alongside project creators guiding highly successful campaigns on platforms ranging from Kickstarter and Indiegogo to niche platforms like Seed&Spark, Barnraiser, Fund Dreamer, and Hatchfund. A dynamic speaker, Kathleen uses her skills as a former teacher and financial professional to run highly interactive workshops that address the needs of novice crowdfunders as well as experienced veterans at venues including General Assembly, Impact Hub, Pepperdine University, the Director’s Guild of America, and the Small Business Administration. Kathleen is a member of the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA) and sits on the Board of Advisors for the 5th Annual Global Crowdfunding Convention.

We'd like to take a moment to thank Kathleen for offering her support, because of her efforts, knowledge and leadership, FlyGirls Is taking off in ways we only dreamed possible. It's the ability to dream that's been guiding us all along, we've taken our cue from the WASP after all.......

FlyGirls begins its tribute to unsung heroes through crowdfunding

From the Director:

We Begin our Tribute to the UNSUNG HEROES.

Our crowd funding campaign officially begins today. It is a grassroots effort where our fan’s support of even $1 will make a difference and create a groundswell so we cannot be ignored. The time is now, for the first time, to see this important chapter of our nation’s history through the eyes of women who served our country.

https://www.funddreamer.com/campaigns/flygirls

We are going for 100 backers today, Monday, as we are going to the press today, and your donation proves we have an audience.

This is a story about this country and what it was trying to become. A country of nation-states was finding its place in the world. The war broke down barriers for some of its men and its women, lifting the veil to see a promise of the possibilities. When their country no longer needed these women, their dreams and hopes were crushed. They were the future and it could not be denied forever. It is up to us! Thank you.

https://www.funddreamer.com/campaigns/flygirls

Why Crowdfunding for FlyGirls

From Director Matia Karrell: Why Crowd Funding for FlyGirls; Why Your Participation Matters.

Over 20 years ago, I began my research for FlyGirls. It's gone through many forms, first a film script - people told me no one would ever watch a film with only women - to a play performed in Provincetown, Cape Cod, which featured Bee Haydu, 44-7, making a grand entrance in her original uniform at the end - to what is now an epic Mini Series.

We begin our story with the first 25 American women that Jackie Cochran recruited to go to England, to serve in the British Auxiliary Transport Authority. Having secured the rights to Pauline Gower's memoir, the woman who was in charge of the woman's division of the ATA, we have her first-hand accounts of what it was like. I am also obtaining the rights to Anne Wood Kelly's diaries: an account of her day to day life flying in the ATA. She was an American pilot that was Jackie Cochran's second in command in the UK.

Additionally we have the rights to Byrd Granger's On Final Approach, which we credit in our trailer. Granger was a WASP, and later a college professor, who collected many of the documents that helped the WASP prove their military status in Congressional hearings during the 70's. On Final Approach recounts the events of 1942-45 on a daily basis.

Over the years of getting to know these women, attending reunions, memorials, the Gold Medal Ceremony, and truly getting to know them as friends, the sense of injustice I feel that the world doesn't know about them has carried me through all of the "No's" all these years. The sense of duty I feel to get their story told - in a way that is true to them.

There are various stages that developing a television mini-series demands: the monies we raise will allow us to start the pre-production process: hiring a writing team, and other pre-production costs. We've come this far with people volunteering their time, and with this much needed start up money, we can continue.

Our primary goal is to remain independent so we can maintain the integrity of this project, by keeping the creative control with us, thus ensuring that we will fulfill the promise I made to Violet Cowden with some of the best TV we have ever seen.

We are ten days away from launching our crowdfunding campaign, on Thursday, October 22nd. Your participation, no matter the amount, shows that we have an audience behind us. It shows there is a demand for this kind of programming. With your help, we can make this project a reality, and bring the story of the first women pilots to fly in the military to the world.