At midnight on May 1, #SciFund Challenge projects go live on RocketHub! If you are launching a project, there is lots of stuff you need to know.

1. If you haven’t yet, please go ahead and post your draft #SciFund project on the Wikispaces site, so that you can get feedback.

2. It would be best if you could post your project to Rockethub by April 29. If you can’t make this deadline, let me know and we can push out for you until the 30th.

3. Let’s move on to the details of uploading your project to RocketHub. Brian Meece, the CEO of RocketHub, has been extremely supportive of #SciFund and he wanted me to provide you with his direct contact information, in case you have any issues with RocketHub (contact Jai for Brian’s contact info).

You can upload SciFund projects to RocketHub through a special  link (contact Jai for link).

The upload process should be fairly self-explanatory, but I want to touch on a few parts of the upload form.

Part 1b. Categorize your project
Select “Science” here.

Part 2a. Choose your financial goal
Remember to account for a few hidden expenses when setting your financial target:
• RocketHub takes 8 percent of the amount you raise if you meet or exceed your target. They take 12 percent if you don’t meet your target.
• Budget in the amount that you will need for preparing and mailing
rewards to contributors.
• Your university will likely take a percentage of the amount that you raise. Check with the development office in your university, as this percentage varies widely.

Part 2b. Set your time limit
Select “31 days”.

Part 2e. Link to your project video
RocketHub handles video via YouTube and Vimeo. So, you’ll need to upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo before you register your project on RocketHub. Uploading video to YouTube is extremely easy. Here are the instructions.

Do not set your video to private.

You’ll need the Video URL of your YouTube/Vimeo video. Here’s how you find the video URL of your video on YouTube. Once you have uploaded the video, click the Share button under the video. The text provided in the “Link to this video” box is what you need to provide to RocketHub.

If you don’t like the static image that shows up automatically for your YouTube video (called a video thumbnail), you can change it. Here are the instructions.

4. Every part of your RocketHub page can be edited afterwards, except for two things: the length of the campaign and your financial target. I would strongly suggest that you lowball your financial target, for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.

5. There is a main page for SciFund on RocketHub. On May 1st, all of the projects from the previous #SciFund round will be hidden and just your projects will show up. The ordering of the projects on the page will be random, with the random order changing every hour.

6. The main page of the #SciFund Challenge site will also change to mainly feature your projects and I will also organize the projects by subject. I will also be strongly pushing your blog content on the site as well. To that end, I need a complete list of everyone’s blog (if you have one). I have a spreadsheet with a blog list, but I know that it is incomplete.  You should have received a link to the spreadsheet. Please take a look at it to see if your blog is there. If it isn’t, please add yourself

7. Everyone who asked for a SciFund blog should have one at this point. If you would still like one, please let me know. Your address would be scifundchallenge.org/yourblogname. Just tell me the blog name that you would like.

Almost to the start line!