You’ve heard of events in Silicon Valley where groups of venture capitalists gather to hear people’s pitches for innovative new businesses and technologies. And in the end, the VCs reward the best of what they’ve heard and seen with funding. You might also have heard of organizations like Kiva or Grameen Bank, which use micro financing to help the rural poor and low-income entrepreneurs in developing countries. 

Sussu Laaksonen, a Finnish scriptwriter and event organizer who now lives in West Oakland, and Kris Vagner, an artist and the former co-owner and programs director of Fireplace Gallery in Reno, have decided to team up and apply a combination of the two approaches to help the local art scene. They’re throwing a party where artists who make the cut will present their ideas and proposals for the art they’d like to create. The guests, who will primarily be entry level art patrons buying tickets in the range of $20 to $35, will vote for their favorite pitches over soup and beer. The winner will take home the proceeds from the evening. Very appropriately, the event, which will be held in West Oakland, is called Sugar Mama. 

The two do not take any credit for the idea, innovative as it is. They heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) about Sloup, a monthly soup dinner in St. Louis where people gather to raise money for artists. “No one’s doing it here, so we decided to do it…with a little spin on it,” says Vagner.

They're hoping to pull in patrons from the Bay Area tech and business communities who might not already be circulating in the art world to support the arts.  

The amounts they raise at their first Sugar Mama event might not be huge, but they will be available immediately, unlike most grants out there. “I’ve received government funding,” says Vagner. “I appreciate it and it’s accessible, but it often can take a year to go through the process.”

Kris Vagner, the co-founder of Sugar Mama

And here, the money from the patrons goes straight to the artist. There aren’t any administrative cuts and nothing’s going into their own pockets, says Vagner.

Vagner and Laaksonen met through a mutual friend at a party less than a year ago. They kept running into each other and started discussing ideas -- some in person and some over Facebook. They realized that they cared about the same things and really enjoyed connecting people.

“A big part of our motivation is that we know a lot of people are interested in supporting art, they couldn’t donate a million dollars to MOCHA, they want to know what they can do with $20,” says Vagner. “This is for people who otherwise don’t have an avenue to support the arts, who’re thinking, ‘I would like to support something cool, but I don’t know how to do it in a way that my money’s going to be used in a way that’s interesting to me.’”

The party’s going to be held at the Myrtle Street Review Headquarters in West Oakland, another name for Sussu Laaksonen’s home.

If you’d like to get tickets, go to sugarmamaparty.blogspot.com/

If you’re an artist and would like to send in your proposal (they’re going to pick six finalists), here are the guidelines from Sugar Mama. The deadline is June 3.

Send a brief proposal to sugarmamaparty@gmail.com. Include the following:
1. Your name
2. Your contact info
3. Tell us what you’ll do with your Sugar Mama grant (Include a general description of the project you’d like to fund and a list of items/supplies/services you’ll spend the money on and their estimated costs.)
4. Give us a little background information about what you’ve been working on that led you to this project and how your idea unfolded.5. Include images, audio, video or a url that will give us a good sense of your general style and/or a project you’ve completed in the recent past. 6. Paste or attach your artist’s resume/bio. (Your resume will not weigh heavily in the selection process. We’ll use it mainly to cull a few highlights so we can better introduce you to our guests.)