I just answered a question posted by a colleague who is working on her first documentary and I thought this would be useful to some of the folks who visit here as well. The text is below.
Hey Sabrina,
Great question and open to many answers. I'll stick to some process oriented bits of guidance:
1) Write a master proposal that you can tailor for different grants and project phases.
i.e. some grantmakers only fund development, others prefer to fund projects at the finishing phase.
2) Build a community around your project, find people who want to support you and who would benefit from seeing the film.
a) Reaching out to this amazing group is a good start, also check out Doculink and folks from IDFA, The Flaherty Seminar
b) When I think of people who benefit from the film, I think of people who are very familiar with the subject, issues you're dealing with, groups are good for feedback as well as support.
3) Find a few mentors who can coach you through your various growth phases:
a) One type of great advisor is someone who has made many docs before,
b) Another key advisor group you'll need are the people who are subject matter experts.
4) Once you have a clear roadmap for the film, you've identified your target audience; it’s a good idea to make a realistic assessment of who would fund your project. A great place to start is the Foundation Library, while you're doing that you can also explore indiegogo and kickstarter and build an online campaign for your development phase. That is the hardest phase to fund since there's not much more than an idea to demonstrate. If you've made a trailer that closely matches your vision and intentions you can create a compelling case and make that idea more tangible as well as showing your ability to craft a good story.
Hope this advice is helpful to you.
Patience, perseverance and persistence,
Every day, just move the project forward a little.
Make a phone call, send an email, do a little research, write up a pitch document when you're good and fired up. Take risks, make foolish choices and give yourself permission to make mistakes.
You'll get there.
Warmly,
Francesca