Donate to the film
Why we need your help:
To put it bluntly, producing a film can be expensive.
So far we’ve managed to self-fund the project and to date have managed to get enough together for the majority of the equipment we need to shoot this film.
Serco operates across the UK and we need some extra funding to cover travel and accommodation costs. It is important that we are able to film in different locations to fully reflect the vast and diverse contracts that Serco are involved in and to gather the views and experiences of the people who rely on Serco operated public services.
Crowd Sourcing:
Although Serco have managed to win contracts worth billions of pounds of tax payer money, they have largely managed to avoid scrutiny from mainstream media. This could be a result of organisations such as the BBC outsourcing parts of their company (Serco were a preferred bidder to operate license fee collections.)
While there are a number of public and private organisations that fund films, their focus is often on how commercially successful a film can be. Additionally getting a single organisation to foot the bill can often lead to compromises in a films content.
This is why we’ve decided that the best way to fund this project is through ‘Crowd-funding’.
Effectively crowd funding is where a large number of people, each donate a small amount of money to ensure the success of a project. Over the last few years this funding method has become one of core funding streams for independent film.
The importance of your donation:
By making a donation to this project, you will help us to produce a film which will raise awareness of government outsourcing.
The practice of outsourcing public services is not a new one, the number of contracted out services has steadily been increasing over the last two decades.
As public bodies seek to cut costs in line with government policy, more and more of our services are at risk of being signed over to private suppliers.
This growing risk is not only a response to difficult financial times however. The Open Public Services white paper, presented to Parliament in July 2011, highlights the governments intention to increase the number of providers that deliver public services.
“We want people to have a choice about the services they use, and the only way for that to happen is for provision to be opened up to a range of providers of different sizes and different sectors.”
Three more reasons:
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Outsourcing threatens democracy - If a contract lasting 20-30 years is signed, it ties the hands of future elected officials.
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Outsourcing is generally a one way street - The costs involved in bringing services back in house are often very prohibitive.
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Outsourcing changes the value of Public Services - an outsourcing company is firstly responsible to their shareholders - not to the public.