Thanksgiving and SciFund: opportunities everywhere

Thanksgiving and SciFund: opportunities everywhere

Jai Ranganathan

We'll all be home for a #SciFund Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is coming and so is an opportunity to spread the word about  #SciFund projects. If you are looking to get extra traction for a project, here is an idea. Why not talk up the project with the friends and family that you will soon be seeing?

And instead of asking them for contributions, ask them to help spread the word about the project with their own networks and organizations. This spreading of the word is really the most valuable thing that your friends and family can do. The evidence from the projects that have hit their funding targets is extremely clear: spreading awareness of a project over multiple networks is very important for success (evidence here, here, and here).

Happy travels everyone!

4 comments on “Thanksgiving and SciFund: opportunities everywhereAdd yours →

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  1. What would work best for me would be a site where I could make automatic payments of some sum every month. Once in a while I would go to that site, look over the projects, and make donations.
    It would be best if the projects were packaged Kickstarter style, with fund-by dates and increasing incentives for higher funding levels. I should be able to set up tags that would connect with projects of special interest and describe projects that I wish someone would take on. And rate outcomes.

  2. Also the platform should support some kind of interaction with other funders and the principals of the projects being funded.

    1. Great ideas fhapgood. You may not be aware, but much of the functionality that you suggested already exists for SciFund projects on RocketHub (scifund.rockethub.com). Projects are already packaged Kickstarter-style (RocketHub and Kickstarter are similar). There is lots of space for interaction on the individual SciFund pages on RocketHub. As for automatic monthly payments, I don’t think that would quite work in this case as all SciFund projects are 45 days in length (start Nov. 1, end Dec. 15).

      1. By Kickstarter style I meant fund-by dates, such that you are only charged if the project gets to a specific level of donations by date X. (I could be persuaded that this is not a good idea but that hasn’t happened yet.) And I do understand that this particular instance of crowdfunding has a 45 day life space. I was looking ahead, trying to imagine a platform that presented science projects on a continuing basis, and that I would be comfortable visiting regularly, maybe for years. Automatic monthly payments would be a way of reducing transaction costs. Perhaps there are other ways of getting there.