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Universities Harness the Power of Crowdfunding

Online crowdfunding platforms are helping students and faculty take their projects from concept to reality.

As crowdfunding has become more popular over the last few years, universities are harnessing the power of online micro-fundraising to help campus groups reach their project goals.

With university-run crowdfunding platforms, groups of students, faculty and staff can spread the word about their independent projects and pique the interest of potential donors. 

The Bee Informed Partnership at the University of Maryland, College Park, for instance, started a crowdfunding campaign to monitor the health of regional honeybee populations, which pollinate the flowers of much of the produce that we eat. Honeybees have been dying off, and beekeepers and others who were troubled by this problem donated to the campaign. With the $24,000 the lab raised, they'll place 24 sentinel hives throughout the state to alert beekeepers when their colonies become weak. 

Online donations allow people to give easily to projects and causes that not only resonate with them, but make a tangible difference. And these types of platforms attract new donors, especially those who were born in the 1980s to 2000s. 

"Crowdfunding fits very well with what we know about how millennials like to give charitably," said Nora Pittmann, manager of new donor strategies at the University of Maryland, College Park, who spends about half of her time on the Launch UMD program

Before Arizona State University's ASU Foundation started using the USEED crowdfunding platform for higher education two years ago, university groups relied on car washes, percentage nights at restaurants and other one-off activities to raise money. Most of the fundraising was uncoordinated and limited in scale.

"We joke that our program replaces high school fundraising," said Tiffany Antor, associate director of annual giving at ASU Foundation, which runs the PitchFunder crowdfunding program

Plenty of third-party platforms exist online that student groups could use, but these universities decided to host their own versions of education crowdsourcing platforms for at least three reasons:

1. More money can go to the actual project.

Typical platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo take a percentage of what groups raise based on how well the project performs — anywhere from 4 to 9 percent. They also charge payment processing fees of at least 3 to 5 percent.

In comparison, ASU Foundation takes a flat 5 percent from each project's funds and uses it to advance the university. And the University of Maryland, College Park, pays ScaleFunder a flat fee every 12 to 18 months, but doesn't require groups to pay to use it. On top of that, even projects that don't reach their goal can apply the funds they did raise to start their work, which isn't always the case on outside platforms.

2. Groups receive training and support.

Crowdfunding account managers coach groups through the fundraising process and help them create realistic goals, focused projects and calls to action. The university started an application process to vet the projects and trains teams in communications and marketing so they can get their message across. 

Students and faculty have to efficiently raise money because they typically have 30 to 45 days to run their campaign.

"One of the beauties of crowdfunding is it's on a short timeline," Antor said, "so it really builds up that urgency to encourage donors to give right now."

3. Project teams are held accountable to steward the money well.

The money doesn't go directly to students. Instead, it's managed in university accounts for each project so that donors' money is used for its intended purpose. Project teams also need to show donors what they're doing with the money, including posting pictures, videos and presentations of their work on the crowdfunding platform. 

"It's not just the money comes in — we really try to tighten that connection between the project and the donor," Pittmann said.    

The results

Over the last two years, ASU has approved about 30 projects and trained more than 500 people to raise money through crowdfunding, while the University of Maryland, College Park, has approved more than 40 projects for launch. On both of these university platforms, about three-quarters of the projects have met their fundraising goals. 

And these projects are making a difference. At ASU, a group of engineers called 33 Buckets raised $10,000 to bring water filters to a girls' school in Bangledesh, where one in five people die after drinking contaminated water. Their project will provide less expensive water for the school, teach local people how to maintain the filtration system and enable them to sell excess water in their communities. That means the school will have enough revenue to maintain the filtration system.

"It really is almost impossible to measure the global impact of PitchFunder," Antor said, "but it's absolutely having one thanks to all the folks who are participating in campaigns."