PLATFORMS USED BY COLLEGES
If many of the crowdsourcing websites look very similar, it’s because most colleges and universities today use the same software from ScaleFunder (scalefunder.com), whose “platform is the digital arm of the Ruffalo Noel Levitz [ruffalonl.com] suite of fundraising solutions” and currently the largest company providing support for crowdfunding. ScaleFunder, founded in 2012, now boasts having more than 1,800 universities and colleges as clients. Other providers include Blackbaud (blackbaud.com), the Drupal developer Skvare (skvare.com), and Network for Good (networkforgood.com), which claims to have provided technical support for organizations, having raised “over $1 billion in donations to over 125,000 nonprofits.”
Using an available software platform allows schools to do fundraising in-house while maintaining control for fraud and funds. It also allows institutions to enlarge their pool of potential donors for other projects and initiatives. And the results are impressive. Here is just a sampling of collegiate crowdfunding sites, most less than 2 years old:
University of Colorado–Boulder
colorado.edu/crowdfunding
UC–Berkeley
crowdfund.berkeley.edu
University of Alabama–Birmingham
crowdfund.uab.edu
MIT
crowdfund.mit.edu
Marquette University
marquette.edu/crowdfunding
Boston University
crowdfunding.bu.edu
Cornell University
crowdfunding.cornell.edu
Purdue University
crowdfunding.purdue.edu/about#org_faq
Carnegie Mellon University
crowdfunding.cmu.edu
George Washington University
https://secure2.convio.net/gwu/site/SPageNavigator/colonial_crowdfunding.html
University of Delaware
udel.givecorps.com
UCLA
spark.ucla.edu
Pepperdine University
pepperdine.edu/giving/crowdfunding.htm
University of Arizona
crowdfund.arizona.edu
University of Minnesota
crowdfund.umn.edu
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
rit.useed.net
Missouri S&T
crowdfunding.mst.edu
University of Maryland
www.launch.umd.edu
No Catch 22 for the Vonnegut Library
The Kurt Vonegut Memorial Library (vonnegutlibrary.org), a privately funded library in Indianapolis, had a problem. It needed a permanent home due to the impending sale of its current building. In addition to a traditional capital campaign, it turned to Kickstarter to raise $99,999. It was touch and go up until the last minute, but at the end of the Kickstarter campaign, 1,498 backers pledged $117,291.
A library success story!
