By Avery Boulware, Campus Carrier News Editor

 The advancement office is in the process of launching BerryFunder, a crowdfunding site aimed specifically at young alumni.

“Crowdfunding is a neat thing because it’s a channel we can use to put passion projects out there,” Director of Alumni Development Jennifer Schaknowski said. “We know it certainly resonates with young groups and that’s exciting.”

BerryFunder had its soft launch this summer, advertising two projects connected to Berry. The first project looked to fund new state-of-the-art equipment for HackBerry labs. Alumni were able to celebrate students’ work and further fund it. However, the project didn’t meet the donation goal before the window closed on Aug. 20.

The second project looked to bring the Kindermusik program at the Child Development Center to children at the South Rome Early Learning Center.

This summer the advancement office approached Kathryn Nobles, adjunct music instructor and director of Kindermusik, for permission to use the program as a pilot for BerryFunder. She hoped to expand the program from one class of 18 children to two classes at the Early Learning Center.

“Many times children will respond to music when they don’t respond to something else,” Nobles said. “They can learn social skills and language, alphabet and numbers and colors through music.”

The Kindermusik project exceeded its fundraising goal before the window closed. 35 donors contributed, collectively raising $3,167, which was about $100 above the goal.

“I love that a lot of people give a little,” Nobles said. “That’s kind of the mantra (of crowdfunding).”

This mantra is the reason Schaknowski and others in the advancement office were inclined to use crowdfunding. The idea of combining lots of small donations instead of several large ones is more appealing to millennials who may not have as much to give yet.

“A lot of small gifts together makes something great happen,” Schaknowski said.

A challenge with the nature of crowdfunding, however, is that it requires more work from the head of whatever project is being funded. It takes a team of people actively promoting the project to garner interest and donations.

“It’s very grass roots,” Schaknowski said. “It does take the project owners and their teams to reach out on Facebook and send emails. It’s a wonderful platform but it does take that legwork. You can’t just put it up there and think that people are going to magically support it.”

Though the program had its soft launch this summer, BerryFunder will officially be launched in about a month, backing projects from various programs on campus, possibly including research funding and campus beautification. 

BerryFunder will soon fully launch and have its own separate web address, but for now projects can be found at http://www.berry.edu/funder.