Crowdfunding to support University Research and Public Outreach

Presented by:
Brian Jackson, Dept. of Physics, Boise State University, Boise ID, USA

Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, often performed via the internet. Several universities across the US have begun to adopt this model to support small-dollar, high-profile projects and provide seed money for research efforts. By contrast with traditional scientific funding (e.g., external grants), crowdfunding provides a novel way to engage the public in the scientific process, and such campaigns sometimes involve rewards to donors in the form of acknowledgments in publications and direct involvment in the research itself.

In this presentation, I will discuss my own crowdfunding project to support the rehabilitation of Boise State's on-campus observatory.