Congrats to our TCD students on their successful crowdfunding campaigns!
Dr. Bette Loiselle and I teach a class called “Fundraising for Tropical Conservation & Development Professionals”, and one of our assignments is for students to explore the costs and benefits of crowdfunding by running a project of their own. We learned quite a bit from the first time we did this assignment - which by the way was a huge success for us and the students - and I thought I would give a shout out to our students by letting everyone know how hard they worked and what a great job they did. This is a repost from our class website.
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Our crowdfunding campaigns have ended and our class did great! Here are some stats:
- Grand total: $6483 (5 projects)
- No. of Donations: 221 (some people donated to >1 project; actual no. of donors slightly lower)
- Average Donation: $29.33
- Projects reaching 100%: 3/5*
Overall I would consider this a huge success. It was especially impressive because only 5 days into the month-long campaign the students got an email informing them Rockethub had been acquired by another company and suspended their campaigns. After a few days of frantic emails and a herculean effort by Kym in the LAS office Rockethub was willing to extend to the original deadline and lower the fees (*though one of the campaigns was permanently marked as ‘completed’, which really hurt the student’s efforts).
Congratulations to our students, and thanks to all to donors!
EB & BL
The details
Dana Karelus: movement and habitat use of Florida’s bears: $1770 by 38 funders (118%)
Arjun Srivathsa: ecology and conservation of Dhole (wild dogs): $2000 by 36 funders (100%)
Mirelis Martinez: environmental education in Bahia, Brazil: $55 by 4 funders*
Percy Peralta: Reforestation in the Peruvian Amazon to plant 1000 trees: $993 by 44 donors (84%)
Kirsten Hecht Biology of Sirens: $1665 by 48 (116%)
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