Almost everyone I talk to treats the fundraising trailer as an expense they have to conjure money for. It is not. On the industry's own budget template it is a pre-existing account with a dollar figure already sitting next to it.
This matters more than it sounds. If the trailer is a discretionary purchase, then paying for one means finding new money, and finding new money means a conversation nobody wants to have. If it is a budgeted line, then paying for one is an approval. Same money, completely different conversation.
So here is the actual sheet.
The International Documentary Association publishes a budget and schedule template that a great many funders expect to see filled in. In the current version, rewritten for 2025, the fundraising sample has its own block:
| Acct | Line | Qty | Budgeted |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1500 | Editing & post-production for sample teaser | $4,715.15 | |
| 1510 | Editor (contractor) | 1 wk | $3,000 |
| 1520 | Assistant editor | 0.6 wk | $900 |
| 1530 | Edit room rental and editorial expenses | 1 wk | $500 |
That is the number. Not a guess, not a market rate somebody quoted at a panel. It is what the template your funder is reading already says the piece costs.
There is a trap here, and I nearly walked into it myself.
For years everyone in this corner of the business quoted the same line: account 1060, editor, two weeks, $3,000 a week, $6,000. It is real. It is verbatim correct. And it is on a document from roughly 2019 that has since been superseded. In the current template, account 1060 does not exist.
Worse, the current template does still contain a two weeks at $3,000 line totalling $6,000. It is account 10050, and it sits under promotional materials. It is the promo trailer for a finished film, and the sheet itself flags it as excluded from the production budget by some funders. It is not the fundraising sample.
So if somebody quotes you $6,000 and calls it the standard fundraising sample line, they are either reading a document that expired or reading the wrong row. Open the sheet. It takes a minute.
This is the part almost nobody uses. The sample teaser block does not sit alone. Adjacent to it on the same template, all budgeted, all in development:
| Acct | Line | Budgeted |
|---|---|---|
| 1310 | Written treatment / proposal | $2,500 |
| 1320 | Fundraising / pitch deck | $1,500 |
| 1330 | Budget and schedule | $2,500 |
| 1340 | Cashflow | $1,000 |
| 10010 | Poster / key art design | $4,000 |
| 7210 | Main title design | $4,000 |
Your whole development package is on that sheet, pre-priced, by the same body your funder trusts. Most filmmakers apply for the teaser money and leave the treatment and deck money sitting there unclaimed, then pay for those things out of pocket later. You do not have to do that.
If you want proof that the trailer is standard rather than a nice-to-have, it is not from the IDA. It is from ITVS, whose template has a section literally titled ITVS Required Items:
1107 Trailer 1 allow 4,000 4,000 ITVS budget template, under "ITVS Required Items", total $6,135
The trailer is $4,000 of the $6,135 they require. Sixty-five percent of everything they mandate is the trailer. It is not a garnish. In their view it is most of what development is.
I will be direct, since the whole point of this piece is to be. I charge $5,000 for a first project. That number is not reverse-engineered from what I want to earn. It sits against the $4,715 block above.
Which is the actual argument: at roughly the budgeted level, hiring someone is an approval. Above it, you have to go find money, and that is a fundraise to pay for the thing that does the fundraising. That is a bad shape.
The other direction matters too. If you are working off a Catapult grant at $25,000 total, or a Chicken & Egg development grant at $20,000, then $5,000 is a fifth of everything you have. That is real and I do not pretend otherwise. It also means anyone quoting you five figures for a pitch tape is quoting more than your entire development budget, and you should treat that as the signal it is.
Know the number before you take the call. That is all this piece is for.