7 days left: Last chance to save this 80 year project. Can you spare $11.50?

As of this writing, more than FOUR THOUSAND people have visited the project page! But only 37 people have backed the project, and I am only 4% of the way to the goal. The average pledge is $47, but the interesting thing is that if all 4000 people put in $11.50, the project would be funded. If you feel like a drop in the bucket, you're not. $11.50 can literally be the difference between research happening or not happening. If you don't know, Experiment.com is all or nothing. So, if we don't reach the goal, the project gets nothing, and no one's cards are charged.

Running this campaign has been interesting. I've never tried crowd funding before, but it always seemed like something I wanted to explore. Certain politicians will say that all taxes are bad, and that people should choose what they want rather than government choosing for them. I don't necessarily subscribe to that, but crowdfunding science would certainly be one way to fund basic science, and let people directly choose the science they care about.  I guess the next seven days will determine whether maintaining an 80 year longterm study of forest dynamics is something that people will choose to back.

 

I've had many good suggestions for traditional grant funding. One would think that NSF's LTER programme would be ideal, but they choose specific sites and aren't funding any new ones. So, that won't work, and far I am not aware of any very good options. If this crowdfunding fails, I will try NSF's DEB again, and I welcome continued suggestions either here or on twitter. This crowdfunding thing has been an interesting experiment. I'm not sure I would do it again.