A new crowdfunding website is letting Carleton projects receive funding from anybody with access to a computer and a bank account.
The platform Futurefunder was started by Carleton to let university donors have more control over where their money goes, according to Paul Chesser, chief development officer of Carleton’s Department for University Advancement, which oversaw the project.
“We’d known for a long time that donors wanted to be more active in choosing the different projects they wanted to support,” Chesser said. “They wanted to actually see the impact of their giving.”
The website displays Carleton student, faculty, and researcher projects that need funding.
Similar to other crowdfunding platforms, potential donors can read about different projects and see how close they are to their funding goals.
One project seeking funding is a two-week research trip for Carleton students to Antarctica called “Students on Ice.”
The project’s leader Claudia Schröder-Adams said securing funding through Futurefunder is essential for many of the students who want to participate.
“To many, it really means they can either go or not go,” she said.
The inspiration for Futurefunder came from other successful crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, according to Ryan Davies, who led the creation of Futurefunder.
“We thought ‘Why can’t we just develop a Kickstarter for the university?’” he said.
One difference between Futurefunder and those platforms is that FutureFunder donations go through Carleton, which, as a registered charity, qualifies them for charitable tax receipts, Chesser said.
Another difference is Futurefunder does not offer rewards to donors. Some projects however, like “Students on Ice,” offer rewards independently.
“[Schröder-Adams] has offered any donors the chance to come and meet the students before they go, and receive photos,” Davies said. “It’s pretty standard, that’s the way we like to work with people who support Carleton.”
Davies said he is happy with how the project is going, but there is still room to improve.
“We’re just now making more noise about the site,” he said.
Schröder-Adams said the website is not raising as much money for the expedition as she had hoped.
“I had hoped that with small donations, but very many of them, we would kind of jump ahead a little faster,” she said.
With the trip leaving in December she said she hopes donations will improve.
“It makes a huge difference to the students, whatever we can raise there. A small amount, but multiplied by many people,” she said.
