Crowdfunding engages public in campus endeavors at University of Iowa

IOWA CITY - Back in the 1920s, a resident named Harry Bremer kept two lions in his carriage house until later moving them to the zoo.

When they died, the University of Iowa's Museum of Natural History took the pair, created mounts and displayed the taxidermy lions behind glass - where they remain today.

'But their exhibit was never finished,” said Trina Roberts, who oversees Pentacrest museum operations for the university. 'So, if you look at it, you see that it's very bare. No painted backdrop and no plants. Not even information about lions or the really interesting story about these lions.”

It's time that changed, Roberts said.

Through a new UI-hosted crowdfunding website aimed at making it easier to raise money for modest research projects and academic endeavors across campus, Roberts made a video pitch for donations toward a new UI lions' den.

'What we are hoping to do is make a new exhibit for our lions and give them just a better place to live within the museum,” Roberts says on the video. 'Show your pride in the Museum of Natural History by helping our pride of lions get a new exhibit.”

The new crowdfunding platform, called GOLDrush at goldrush.uiowa.edu, launched Wednesday morning with three inaugural projects each hoping to raise $10,000 in a month.

The first seeks funds for the lion exhibit; a second aims to improve access to health services for Congolese women and children who've found refuge in Johnson County; and the third goes toward dissemination of a data-driven web-based application to help distract pediatric patients during medical procedures like immunizations.

Just hours after the launch, the projects had raised thousands. The 'distraction in action” app, for example, raised nearly $3,000 by noon.

The crowdfunding site won't replace the UI Foundation's extensive research-related fundraising efforts, and it won't affect faculty efforts to win competitive and often federally-tied grants for groundbreaking science - the kind occurring across its biomedical campus.

The hope, rather, is to use the new platform to inform the public about lesser-known campus initiatives and connect with potential donors.

'One of the things that we're really trying to do - recognizing that the way a newer generation than me interacts with the world is much more via social media and electronically - is to be able to engage those younger alumni with causes and projects,” said Dan Reed, UI vice president for research and economic development.

UI officials will screen prospective projects for crowdfunding - avoiding complex initiatives with extensive protocols and limiting those chosen to $10,000 goals.

'We want these to be quick outcomes and successes,” Reed said.

That could encourage more potential donors.

'Asking someone to give thousands of dollars to a project might not be financially possible,” Reed said. 'But giving $50 to $100 entirely would be. So we're trying to broaden the base of engagement.”

Web-based crowdfunding has been trending nationally in that it provides an easy and relatively quick way to raise money for individuals, projects or causes. Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa have launched similar sites.

ISU in the last year raised tens of thousands for projects like its ISU Fashion Show, a service center in rural Uganda and the marching band's D-Day memorial trip over the summer. UNI has funded its marching band's trip to London this winter and a 'Microsoft surface hub” for its library, for example.

UI Foundation President Lynette Marshall said she doesn't think crowdfunding will produce hundreds of thousands for the bottom line, but rather expand the audience and make it easier to finance works.

'What we're really hoping is that it helps the faculty members take some ownership for promoting their own projects,” she said. 'And it provides them with a secure, well-designed platform from which they can do that.”

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