LaunchKU helps crowfund campus organzations

Photo by Elizalde McCoy and Lisa Scheller

On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights, Liz Brown, a student at KU Medical Center, volunteers at the student-run JayDoc Free Clinic.

It costs about $100 per patient, and the Kansas City clinic sees about 2,000 patients per year, Brown said. The organization has partnered with LaunchKU, a program through KU Endowment designed to help students, faculty, staff and alumni raise money for projects and passions.

The initiative, which began Nov. 13 and will continue through Jan. 13, is a crowdfunding platform that gives people an opportunity to donate to a variety of different causes.

Rosita McCoy, senior vice president of communications and marketing at KU Endowment, said projects must have a vision that will have an impact to the campus in order to be considered.

“To be selected, each project must have a finite timeframe and be a meaningful campus initiative that needs an infusion of revenue,” McCoy said in an email. “Each organization is responsible for building support through their social networks, which empowers them to reach beyond traditional areas of support.”

Endowment planners researched various crowdfunding platforms before the program launch. The initiative uses ScaleFunder, a national funding platform for higher education and nonprofits. McCoy said this outlet will allow Endowment to cut down on costs per transaction.

“KU Endowment can apply 100 percent of the gifts to their intended purpose,” McCoy said. “We provide free-of-charge the design, the tools, the overall guidance and the gift processing.”

ScaleFunder, as opposed to other crowdfunding sources like Indigogo or GoFundMe, partners with universities to minimize the percentage of donations that go back to the company so they can go directly to the organization instead.

“Most crowdfunding processors such as Indigogo or GoFundMe charge a commission or gift tax on contributions.

This gift tax can be as much as 18 percent, resulting in significant reduction from what was raised through the site to what the cause actually receives,” McCoy said in an email. “KU Endowment has partnered with Scalefunder to be charged a single fee, which KU Endowment covers in full."

McCoy said this also reduces costs from having to send out direct mail or making phone calls looking for donations. Instead, donations can be made directly through social media.

"[Endowment] helped us quite a bit with getting our page set up through their website and creating a video and helping set up suggested donation amounts,” Brown said. “All we have to do is post updates and share the page on social media.”

There are currently seven projects using Launch KU to raise funds. To date, no organization has reached their target goal, but the initiative will remain open for 36 more days. Unlike other crowdsourcing platforms, Launch KU will allow organizations to keep the money they’ve earned even if they don’t meet their goal.

“Launch KU is a great platform for us to get the word out about our project,” Brown said. “A lot of our funding comes from grants, so we don’t get to spread the word and ask people to donate this way. But now people can make donations that aren’t large amounts of money, and that starts to add up.”

McCoy said there are plans to keep the program running in the future.

“We are hoping that this will be something we can do every year moving forward by identifying different organizations that can benefit from this initiative,” McCoy said.

– Edited by Maddy Mikinski