Medals aren't just for track athletes. Every student who participated in filmmaking during the season receives one - not just directors, but actors, editors, and that good friend who helped set up lights to get the right shot.

EDUFF medals find their way onto bedposts and doorknobs. They remind students that what they made was real, and that it counted.

On average, nearly 200 teens come together in cities across the world to produce the 60-70 films that screen at EDUFF. They come from Minnesota classrooms, from across the country, and from Malaysia, China, Ukraine, and Croatia, to name a few. Every one of them deserves something they can hold.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $40 — medals for 5 filmmakers

•  $80 — medals for 10 filmmakers

•  $160 — medals for 20 filmmakers

•  $400 — medals for 50 filmmakers

•  $1,600 — fund all 200 medals

Free to submit, free to attend, but that doesn’t mean low-budget.

The quality of what students walk into on festival day is very intentional. Professional photography that documents the day for filmmakers and families, custom graphic design, participant event badges, film preparation for theatrical screening, and the printing and signage that makes the space feel like it was built for them.

Goal: $3,000

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $50

•  $100

•  $250

•  $600

Music is an important part of film, and Soundtracks is to introduce our community to local performing artists. Since launching in 2023, we've collaborated with musicians who share a real passion for showing up for younger audiences.

We've had artists who previously attended EDUFF in high school. A musician who reunited with a former teacher at the festival. Artists who just know what it feels like for someone to show up for you.

It's very possible we introduce some students to their very first live band experience! That matters more than it sounds.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $100

•  $250

•  $500 — fund the full performance

The creative world feels reachable when you're actually standing near it. FilmCraft brings working directors, actors, and artists into direct contact with students through hands-on, small group experiences, and it's designed to highlight careers in film, help young filmmakers develop, and give educators something to bring back to the classroom.

In 2025, working professionals led workshops directly with students. In 2024, a Steadicam crew filmed a live music video in front of the audience. In 2023, acowsay film company invited students to handle professional equipment and shoot behind-the-scenes footage for a real video.

This program keeps growing because students keep responding to it.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $150

•  $300

•  $500

•  $900 — fund one full workshop

New for 2026, and it came directly from students asking for ways to hear from their peers about the filmmaking process. A mobile podcast setup gives filmmakers the chance to sit down during the festival and talk about their work: what they made, why they made it, what it took.

Students sit down with hosts who know how to draw a good conversation. The result is a record of what this year's filmmakers actually thought, in their own words, and confidence building through focused attention and real conversations.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $250

•  $500

•  $750

•  $1,500 — fund the full studio setup

Every year, EDUFF produces a handmade program for the festival. Not because it's cheaper or easier, but because when a student picks it up, it looks like something a person actually made. In a world of perfect event handouts that get folded and forgotten, a 16-page zine that fits in your pocket and has real artful presentation in it lands differently. It gives students permission to try something without it having to be perfect first.

It also introduces them to the medium itself. At the festival, students are invited to create and trade their own zines as a way for filmmakers to keep telling the story of their film, and a way for students who don't make films but have something to say to participate in the creative culture of the day. Not every story needs a camera.

This fund covers production costs and brings local artists into the process.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $100

•  $250

•  $500 — fund the full zine program

Some of our filmmakers come through classrooms. Others find their way to EDUFF entirely on their own. Behind most of the films we screen, there's a teacher who made space for it. They built time into the curriculum, troubleshot when the footage corrupted the night before it was due, and watched their students walk into a theater to see their work on a real screen.

At EDUFF, educators receive medals alongside their students. Not as a courtesy, but as a record. A teacher who has worked with student filmmakers for ten years might have a decade's worth of EDUFF medals. That collection tells a story about what they've built, one year at a time.

This fund supports the full scope of how we work with educators: communication resources, and the ongoing relationships that bring student work from the classroom into a real public space year after year.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $50

•  $100

•  $250

Right now there are students who would submit films to EDUFF if they knew it existed. Teachers who would build entire units around it if someone put it in their hands.

A school outreach kit that includes posters, stickers, and physical touchpoints, lands in a classroom and inspires creativity. It opens a conversation that an email never could.

This fund is how EDUFF grows its educator community. Every kit is a first step toward a relationship that could bring new student voices into the festival for years to come. Contributions also support the design development that makes these kits worth sending.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $75 — one school kit

•  $225 — kits for three schools

•  $600 — kits for six schools plus design development

Some of the most meaningful contributions to EDUFF have come from people who saw a young person find themselves through film and wanted to mark that.

You can dedicate your gift in honor of someone who supported a young creator, or in memory of someone whose belief in young people deserves to be carried forward.

Gifts in this category support the full festival experience. The name you provide will be recognized in our EDUFF program.

The festival is the heart of what we do, but not the ceiling. This contribution goes across the full scope of EDUFF and the work that surrounds it: recognition, outreach, artist partnerships, educator support, and the human infrastructure that makes it sustainable year after year.

For donors who want to support everything at once.

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $100

•  $250

•  $500

•  $1,000

•  Custom

Everything else in this campaign depends on this one.

Insurance, bookkeeping, tax preparation, software, and secure storage aren't the exciting part of running a festival. But they're what makes EDUFF a real organization, and one that can be trusted with student work, educator relationships, and the responsibility of doing this well, year after year.

Goal: $7,500

SUGGESTED AMOUNTS

•  $100

•  $250

•  $500

•  $1,000

•  Custom