Seattle’s Scarecrow Video, the world's largest publicly available video archive, needs your help

It’s hard out there for a video store when it’s trying to get money for the rent. Look no further than our old friends at Scarecrow Video in Seattle, Washington. We last wrote about them in 2014, when the store was in the process of transitioning from a for-profit video store into a non-profit video archive. That fundraiser was a massive success, shattering the proposed goal of $100,000 to bring in more than $130,000. The store is currently the largest publicly available video archive in the world, but 10 years, three presidents, and a global pandemic later, Scarecrow Video is on the brink.

Coupled with the ravages of the pandemic and a decrease in private and institutional funding, Scarecrow’s problems outweighed its fundraising. Now, after cutting staff hours and reducing expenses, they’re still stuck. Scarecrow is looking to raise $1.8 million to stay in its current location, provide its staff with a living wage, hire permanent leadership, and have enough capital to “stabilize the organization,” Scarecrow’s leadership wrote in an open letter.

“We are at this crisis point where our rental and sales revenue has declined by about 40%, but we haven’t even returned to 2019 levels,” Scarecrow Video executive director Kate Barr told The A.V. Club by phone. “At the same time, our major expenses, like our rent and payroll, have gone up by like 25%. As a non-profit, the hope was that we would raise enough money through donations, memberships, and grants to be able to make up the gaps, but our efforts just aren’t able to keep pace.”

There are plenty of ways to help, too, even if you’re not in the vicinity of Cafe Nervosa. Those interested can donate at Scarecrowvideo.org/sos, where you can also find out more about the store and other ways to help. Scarecrow, Barr told us, also does rental by mail, “So you can be anywhere in the country and rent from us.” They also have Blu-rays, DVDs, and some videos available for sale on eBay and the Scarecrow website. Wouldn’t you like to be the proud owner of Amadeus on a glorious VHS cassette? Now own one for a good cause. This is about preserving not just one store, but one of the largest publicly available archives in the world (which, once again, anyone around the country can rent from). It matters that these movies have a shelf to be on because the streamers aren’t giving them the time of day.