A Central Crowdfunding Resource at the University of Washington

USEED@UW

A central crowdfunding resource at the University of Washington

University Advancement is offering a new fundraising tool for groups on campus looking to raise $5,000 to $25,000. It’s called “crowdfunding.”

We know there are often groups seeking funding that could use more help. We’re happy to announce that now, they can help themselves using a powerful new online form of fundraising: crowdfunding.

Last year, crowdfunding raised $5 billion worldwide for charitable causes, research, the arts, businesses and many other kinds of campaigns.

Through our partner USEED, we can offer both this technology and a proven process to succeed with it.

How is USEED@UW different from other crowdfunding sites?

Within our toolkit, you can find a table explaining in more detail the differences, but the top 3 differences are:

All gifts to a project are gifts to UW, and are 100% tax-deductible.
All donated funds are available to the project, whether or not the fundraising goal is reached.
Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, USEED provides information about donors to UW, so UW can acknowledge the gift and steward the donor.

What do staff & faculty have to do?

Crowdfunding is entirely volunteer driven. The USEED coaches will oversee and manage these volunteers to help them create a great campaign and organize to fundraise for it, in partnership with the USEED@UW Co-Directors in Annual Giving and Gift Processing.

Your staff and faculty do not need to do anything for these campaigns, unless they’d like to personally volunteer for one.

Who determines which campaigns get approved?

Crowdfunding is still an experimental form of fundraising, so we’ve partnered with USEED to identify the criterion of campaigns most likely to succeed.

Here are some guidelines:

Goal Size / $5,000 to $25,000
Length / 30 days
Focus / A specific project or initiative
Lead by / Five (5) student volunteers
Team Size / Depending on goal size, twelve (12) or more volunteers

Ultimately, the final decision rests with our office as to whether or not a campaign is accepted into the program and approved for launch.

Our criterion is straight-forward:

●Is the group affiliated with our institution?

●Do they comply with our policies?

●Did they complete a campaign page?

●Did they follow the training program we provided to them?

Generally, campaigns that fulfill the above requirements are published and succeed.

How can we make sure campaigns are successful?

USEED, the startup providing our platform, guarantees that every campaign they train and recommend for launch will raise at least $5,000.

Crowdfunding is a 30-day sprint, and relies heavily on volunteers to spread the word about the campaign through email and Facebook. While any promotion and support you can provide your campaigns is helpful, the vast majority of donations will be raised from the personal networks of volunteers.

For this reason, the key to crowdfunding success is recruiting and activating enough volunteers on a campaign to reach their goal. The average volunteer raises $500, so for a $15,000 campaign, you’d need thirty volunteers on the campaign.

We recommend viewing some of USEED’s successful campaigns as a good template:

Type / Project Page / School
Student Organization / The Graphic Design Student Association / ASU
Faculty Research / Fast Farming: Feeding a Hot, Dry World / Penn State
Study Abroad / Play Around the World / Alberta
Experiential Learning Program / STEM 4 All: Inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers / UW
Engineering Project / Dawg Paddling to Nationals: The Concrete Experience / UW

A Central Crowdfunding Resource at the University of Washington

USEED@UW