Before I show some more comparisons of the two rounds of #SciFund, let me point to this analysis by Alex Kourkoulas-Chondorizos of some #SciFund round 2 information. His bottom line?

(T)he best preparation one can make is to nurture a community around their work that will support them when they decide to crowdfund their research.

On to some comparisons! Round 2 raised more money than round 1. But how did the round 2 participants do it? Did the donors give more money? (Click to enlarge.)

 

No evidence of that. It’s surprising how consistent the donations are.

Did projects pull in more donors in round 2 than round 1?

 

There’s not evidence of that, either. If anything, this helps confirm that one of the differences between the rounds was that the second one didn’t have any “breakout” successes like round 1 did. So in both rounds, projects attracted the same sizes of audiences who gave the same amounts of money… which is very counterintuitive, given the totals. This implies that supporters “reached for their wallets” faster in round 2 than round 1.