For 60 days, five iSchool programs will be competing head-to-head for donations from the Syracuse community.

The programs will be competing as part of the “iSchool Fuel Challenge,” a crowdfunding initiative that the School of Information Studies launched this month. Donors can contribute through the Fuel website, general gifts to the iSchool’s programs or donations for a specific program. The initiative has already brought in more than $10,000 in donations — including $5,000 in challenge grants — in the eight days since it began, said Scott Barrett, assistant dean for advancement at the iSchool.

Crowdfunding involves collecting many small donations from a large group of people, typically through the Internet.

The program with the highest number of donations will receive an additional $3,000 challenge grant, he said, while those that come in second and third will receive a $1,500 and $500 bonus, respectively.

The five competitors, according to the Fuel website, are:

• IT Girls, an organization that brings young women to the iSchool for a weekend to engage with information technology
• New Librarianship, a program that educates graduate students in library science about the future of their field
• Student Immersion, an organization that helps students find financial support for immersion experiences
• Syracuse Student Sandbox, an experiential entrepreneurial program that connects enterprising students with professional resources
• Students of Promise, an organization which assists students when financial obstacles or unanticipated personal and family needs jeopardize their college careers, according to the website.

The challenge was strategically planned to run through Orange Central, Family Weekend in November and parts of the holiday season, Barrett said. The reason for this timing was to reach as many potential donors as possible, beyond those on the school’s mailing and emailing lists, he said.

“We think crowdfunding provides an opportunity to reach our alumni where they are (online) and tell compelling stories about our highly student-focused programs,” Barrett said. As it becomes increasingly challenging to reach possible donors through direct mail and telefund, the campaign helps provide another way to encourage support, he said.

Social media is also highly integrated into Fuel’s donation process, Barrett said.

“We know that individuals are more likely to give when they are encouraged by their peers, so we included and are promoting social sharing throughout the site,” Barrett said.

Fuel has created an online donation service and established a Twitter hashtag, “#iFuelChallenge,” to promote the challenge.

The project was imagined, developed and managed entirely by iSchool students, Barrett said. This makes the challenge cost-effective for the school, a distinctive resume-builder for the students involved and attractive to donors — especially iSchool alumni, he added.

Elizabeth Liddy, dean and trustee professor at the iSchool, said in an email she believes the Fuel initiative demonstrates a entrepreneurial, innovative approach for the iSchool in a “fast-moving” world.

Unlike other crowdfunding sites, all of Fuel’s competitors are nonprofits, he said, and all the donors are participating in Fuel out of philanthropy. Other crowdfunding sites try to connect companies or groups with potential investors with the expectation of delivering some kind of product, Barrett said.

“We always intended to be very different,” Barrett said. “Unlike many of the traditional crowdfunding sites, we are not taking pledges that may never be realized if a particular goal is not reached. We wanted our site to celebrate the number of gifts, number of donors as opposed to total dollars raised.”

 

Published on October 9, 2013 at 12:57 am