Vampire bats, angels and crowdfunding

Garry Carter does a pretty good job of raising funds for his research on vampire bats. At least for small grants, such as the Sigma Xi or the Cosmos Club Foundation. However, the money is very difficult to find. “I even took a sabbatical to do field research, because I did not want to pay for my studies at the institute, ”he shares his problems. When Carter heard about the new website www.petridish.org , organizing a fundraiser from Internet users, he decided to try ...



He recorded a video for three and a half minutes with a story about his project on the study of vampire bats. When one of the mice returns from a successful hunt, the others surround it, and the mouse shares its prey, burping up the eaten blood that the others drink from its mouth. In his story, Carter explains that he would like to explore a system of two-way altruism, according to which bats share with each other, and it doesn't matter if they are relatives or not. Carter's goal was to raise $ 4,500 to pay employees to take care of a new colony of bats in their laboratory at the University of Maryland and perform DNA analysis. He had two summer months for everything.



“We have an all-or-nothing collection on our website,” said Matt Salzberg, co-founder of the Petridish website (“Petri dish”). This means that if the project did not reach its goal by the deadline, no credit card will suffer. ” This is a typical crowdfunding model. An inventor, film director or scientist places his idea on the site, conducts some marketing through social networks and hopes that his project will inspire people to donate. In turn, donors can get some positive results. For a donation of $ 600, for example, Carter offered the right to name one of the bats; those who donate $ 1,000 will be mentioned in a scientific article, and a lab tour will be arranged for them.

The idea of ​​crowdfunding research has taken root. Over the six-month history of the Petridish.org site, 80% of the projects achieved their fundraising goals, Salzberg said. On average, people donate $ 70, but some particularly generous benefactors contributed thousands of dollars. Petridish charges 5% of the funds raised, but only if the project reaches its monetary goal.



Here are examples of other successful projects from the Petridish site:

- Conducting DNA mapping of wolves on an island in Upper Lake (Ontario), for which researchers raised more than $ 10,000

“The Yale group raised over $ 7,000 to test the surrounding wells and ponds for the presence of household reagents, such as powders or medicines.

- One astronomer collected more than 12,000 dollars (2,000 more than the goal of the project) - to study the moons outside the solar system.

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A few more sites have joined Petridish.org in the field of crowdfunding research projects. Sites like scifundchallenge.org , theopensourcescienceproject.com and fundageek.com are similar to Petridish.org, but each has its own peculiarity. The site “Sponsor the Geek” (Fundageek), for example, allows researchers to keep the funds they have collected, even if the target amount has not been reached. “We already have a number of successful projects,” says Daniel Gouterez, founder and CEO of Fundageek. "They are not yet very many, but they are all worth being proud of." According to Gutieres, crowdfunding is especially useful for student summer projects, because they usually do not require big money. By the way, commercial projects on fundageek.com, in contrast to non-commercial ones, are subject to the all-or-nothing principle.



Unlike other types of group investment, the project owners in the case of crowdfunding retain all intellectual property rights or profits derived from the funded project, which makes crowdfunding more like charity than investment.



Gutierez believes that by law he has no right to offer benefactors participation in the profits of a sponsored project, at least for the time being. But Jumpstart Our Business Startups, which Barack Obama signed this year, will allow US companies to collect up to $ 1 million through crowdfunding and give donors a chance to earn a profit on their investments. Brad Webb, a partner at Claremont Creek Ventures, which invests in biological companies, sees the role of crowdfunding in helping businesses start up. In his field, start-ups often receive the first money from so-called “angel investors”, wealthy individuals, or several people united in a group who make up and invest together. And as the company grows, “... it begins to follow in the footsteps of angels. So crowdfunding, if it works - and no one yet knows this - will just occupy this niche, ”says Webb.



In June 2012, Carter achieved success and collected the necessary amount for a project with vampire bats, even $ 200 more than stated. "I was shocked. In the first week, someone from the Internet, whom I don’t know at all, donated about $ 1000, ”he shares his impressions.



This experience showed him that sometimes people can act as altruistic as bats.