But before we jump into round 2, Jai and I wanted to know more about round 1. What made for a successful project? How does a crowdfunded proposal compare to a non-crowdfunded grant proposal? What do you need to do to make #SciFund work for you?

To get at these questions and more, we administered a survey to the participants of #SciFund, and we’re starting to analyze it. We have a lot of ideas about relationships and hypotheses to test, but, in the spirit of crowdsourcing, we wanted to crowdsource some of this part of the project to you – the hypothesis generation. I’d say we’d open up the data, but, sadly, cannot due to Human Subjects requirements (see end of this post for an explanation).

Some relationships from the survey data. Nothing doing with traditional funding % and goal achieved. Some hints that folk with blogs raised more money, but we do have some outliers.

So, below the cut is the survey we administered as well as the data fields from Dr. Zen’s excellent efforts. Take a look at it, and post any hypotheses or analyses you want to see done! Feel free to get as fancy, detailed, or nutty as possible, bearing in mind that we have 48 data points, and some of the data are continuous and some categorical.

Note: I entered all of this, then realized I left out the rockethub specific information that I wanted to include first.  Rather than redoing the numbering scheme that Jai had so graciously typed in, um, I continued it…backwards. 

General

-4. Total amount raised

-3. Goal

-2. Percent of Goal Achieved

-1. Number of Views

0. Full temporal record of views

Personal Information

1. Name (we cannot show you this)

2. SciFund Challenge Project Name (we won’t be showing this either)

3. Age

4. Gender

5. Ethnicity

6. Current position (grad student, professor, in industry, etc.)

7. Your institution (university, government, etc.)

8. What is the discipline of your highest degree?

9. What is your highest degree you have completed?

Prior grants

10. How many hours did you spend on your last grant proposal?

11. Over the past five years, what approximate percentage of your grant proposals have been funded?

Social media experience

12. Do you use Facebook?

13. If you use Facebook, how many Facebook friends do you have now?

14. Do you use Twitter?

15. If you use Twitter, how many Twitter followers do you have now?

16. If you use Twitter, for how many months have you been using it?

17. Do you have a science-oriented blog?

18. If you have a science-oriented blog, how many times a month on average do you post to it?

19. If you have a science-oriented blog, for how many months has it existed?

20. If you are engaged in other types of social media, please describe.

Other science outreach

21. In the past twelve months, how many times have you: (possible response: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4+)
      Written a science-oriented article for a general interest news platform
      Given a public talk about science intended for a audience of non-scientists
      Been interviewed by a journalist for a science story

Prior video experience

22. Did you have any experience with video editing prior to participating in the SciFund Challenge?

23. If you do have video experience, how many videos have you worked on (no matter how short)?

SciFund Challenge project preparation

24. How many hours did you spend (possible response: 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7+):
      Writing project text
      Working on your video
      Preparing images
      Preparing and sending out project rewards
      Making comments to other SciFund Challenge projects on the wiki

25. To what degree did you change your SciFund Challenge project in response to feedback on the wiki or RocketHub? (possible response: 1-5,  1 – no change, 5 – complete redo)
      Text
      Images
      Video
      Rewards

26. Did you shorten your video?

27. How many times did you change your video after posting it?

SciFund Challenge project promotion

28. What percentage of the contributors to your project do you personally know?

29. How many hours did you spend promoting your project?

30. How much effort did you make to spread the word about your project during: (possible responses:  no effort,  sporadic effort, weekly effort, effort multiple times a week, daily effort)
      November 1-15
      November 16-30
      December 1-15

31. If you stopped promoting your project before the end of the SciFund campaign period, please describe why. (long answer)

32. What methods did you use to spread the word about your project (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal)?
      E-mail
      Facebook
      Twitter
      Google +
      Blogging on your own blog
      Guest blogging on others’ blogs
      One on one conversations
      Public talks/appearances
      Communicating with journalists/bloggers

33. If you used other methods to spread the word about your project, please describe. (long answer)

34. How many press or new media figures did you notify about your project?

35. Did you spread the word about your project via (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal):
      Personal connections
      Professional connections

36. How many live events (not via computer) did you use to promote your project?

37. If you hosted live events in support of your project, what was the average attendance at these events?

38. How many hours did you spend promoting OTHER SciFund projects?

39. What methods did you use to spread the word about OTHER SciFund projects  (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal)?
      E-mail
      Facebook
      Twitter
      Google +
      Blogging on your own blog
      Guest blogging on others’ blogs
      One on one conversations
      Public talks/appearances
      Communicating with journalists/bloggers

SciFund Challenge project success

40. What do you feel worked to get your project funded? (long answer)

41. What do you feel did not work to get your project funded? (long answer)

42. Do you feel that your SciFund Challenge campaign was a success? Why or why not? (long answer)

43. Do you feel that the SciFund Challenge as a whole was a success? Why or why not? (long answer)

Zen’s Data

44. # Of Contributors

45. Mean Donation

46. Description Length (# of characters)

47. Number of Tweets

48. Number of Facebook Likes

49. Number of video views

N.B. I’d say we’d just open up the data to you, but, doing this kind of survey actually jumps into Human Subjects territory, so Jai and I had to go through the fun of the IRB process, and hence the data is closed. We wish it were otherwise, but there are some solid reasons behind the process and why it exists, and it’s important to respect them as well as the privacy of the participants involved. However, as it’s all collected from public data, if you want to analyze the data collected by Dr. Zen, have at it, and feel free to send us your results. We’ll post ‘em with full credit!

I took this screencap in the closing minutes of last night. I’m going to look back on this for a long time with fondness.

After snapping that shot, I snagged this one of me and Jai.

We're pretty proud papas!

We’re pretty happy with how things turned out. Now we get the data stream from RocketHub, survey participants, and begin to think deeply about what worked, what didn’t, and the future of science crowdfunding. So stay tuned!

And the #SciFund Challenge is now over! We raised $76,230 from 1440 donors, an incredible achievement. I’d like to send a big thank you to everyone involved with #SciFund for all of their hard work. There will be lots of analysis on this blog about what we learned from #SciFund, but for now: thank you.

Oh and the unstoppable Zen Faulkes has also written his take on the end of #SciFund and what it all means.

The end is in sight! #SciFund Challenge projects come to a close in less than 24 hours (around 11:30 PM EST, Dec. 15). If you were thinking about contributing to a #SciFund project, your time has now arrived. And there are forty-nine wonderful science projects to choose from! From  African wildlife in the Serengeti to new sources of biofuel, you have your pick of a giant range of research to fund. Check them all out here!

The bonus featured #SciFund Challenge project for today is STEMulate Learning! by Kalani Hausman.

Almost everyone I know has an old computer or two sitting in the closet. What if we could use all of these older computers to solve tough scientific problems and, at the same time get kids interested in science to boot? That’s precisely what Kalani aims to do through his SciFund project.

Universities are getting rid of older (yet still functional) computers all the time. Through his #SciFund project, Kalani will be harnessing a large number of these machines to create a high-power lab that has the muscle to solve all sorts of computationally-intensive problems in science. But the real point of the project is to get kids involved with actual science. So, as part of the project he’ll be creating a set of freely-downloadable instructions, so that teachers everywhere can also create their own scientific computer labs from discarded machines. It’s a two-for-one deal: help science and help kids get excited about science. Check out STEMulate Learning!

Today’s featured #SciFund Challenge project is Preserving Wildlife to Benefit Farmers by the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University.

Farmland in Costa Rica: the hidden weapon for saving threatened species?

How do we save the threatened species of this planet? In my opinion, this is the absolutely toughest conservation problem in the world because the place with the most threatened species – the tropics – is also the place with the highest concentration of poor people. In country after country, persistent poverty makes it very difficult to do very much for conservation at all.

It turns out that there is a really neat answer to this conservation conundrum, according to the good folks at the Center for Center Conservation Biology (including my awesome doctoral advisor Gretchen Daily and the tireless Danny Karp who also shows up in the video for the Species in Peril project). A huge proportion of area in the tropics is farmland. What if this farmland could do double-duty: improving livelihoods of the poor while also sustaining threatened species?

Sound too good to be true? Well, in study after study, the biologists at the Center have found that there is a huge zone of win-win scenarios for people and wildlife in agricultural areas.

This beetle (the coffee berry borer) wants to eat Starbucks out of business.

Take the case of the coffee berry borer. It is a huge agricultural pest in coffee-growing regions all over the world. In Costa Rica, Center researchers are finding that when native birds remain in coffee farms, they eat a giant number of these beetles, saving coffee growers from economic collapse.

It is an incredible good news story, showing how saving threatened species can also be good news for protecting the most threatened people. But a lot of research still remains to be done. How much exactly do native birds improve livelihoods? How much habitat needs to be preserved for the birds to remain? Check out Preserving Wildlife to Benefit Farmers and let’s get the answers!

Today’s featured #SciFund Challenge project is Species in Peril by the lab of Liz Hadly at Stanford University.

My favorite part of this video starts at the 27 second mark, when graduate student Danny Karp emerges from the inky shadows of a Costa Rican forest at night. He emerges, David Attenborough style, to excitedly point out two tropical frogs on a giant leaf. At that moment, you can feel his excitement and the excitement that comes upon stumbling upon something new in science.

That excitement about science is exactly what the #SciFund Challenge is all about.

More than a pretty face. This tuco tuco is just one of the species being studied by the Hadly lab.

This project is a little different than the other SciFund projects, because it features a whole range of research that is taking place in a single lab. And their research goes all the way from the Rocky Mountains of the United States to Costa Rica to Argentina. All of the biologists in Liz Hadly’s lab focus on the forces that are threatening species by reducing their genetic variation. Having a lot of genetic variation in a species matters! When the amount of variation declines, it makes species less able to deal with major environmental changes, changes like those coming around because of global warming.

How we do prevent the loss of genetic variation in species? How do we help species that have already suffered this loss? Check out Species in Peril and let’s come up with some answers.

One of the fantastic things about research into endangered elephants is that the money goes right back into the communities around them. Shermin de Silva’s Train An Elephant Researcher does just that.

Shermin is following 600 Asian Elephants since her dissertation. Her work has been so successful that she’s now created a field station with more researchers and field assistants. But, first, the field assistants need training!

So meet Tharanga. Tharanga is 18 years old and from the local community. Shermin is trying to fuel Tharanga’s transition into being an elephant research. This will bring money into the local community via elephant research. The benefits in terms of coupling the work the the community around it are incredible.

I love the blend of scientific and larger social goals with this project. And because Shermin has been building the Uda Walawe Elephant Research Project, she’s got a substantial infrastructure to connect you to the work going on there. Take a look at the awesome rewards that are part of the bread and butter that supports the station. Or donate and get a guided tour of the Uda Walawe National Park in Sri Lanka.

So head on over and #SciFund Shermin’s efforts to help elephants and people coexist!

As part of the #SciFund Challenge, John Gust, a doctoral student in anthropology at UC Riverside, is looking for a small amount of funding to finish his research.  I read about John’s RocketHub project – Send John to the Jungle – but wanted to know more about his research goals and the importance of his work.

John works in the Yucatan Peninsula studying the remains of the indigenous Maya in the 19th century.  Since people (me included) only ever hear about the Classic-period Maya civilization (c. 250 to 900 AD), I asked John to tell me more about what he expects to learn.  Following are my questions and his responses (edited a bit).

Tell me about the Historic-period Maya.  What are your research questions?

The larger project of which this is a part is looking at extractive industries in northern Quintana Roo, about 20 miles south of Cancun. In 1847, the lower classes, mostly Maya, initiated a peasant revolt against the government known as the Caste War.  Within about 10 years, the war was over and the Maya were defeated.  Some settled with the government and received relative autonomy, but were subject to raids by the hold-out rebels into the 20th century.

In addition to social unrest, at this time in Mexico, the first age of globalization got going.  Foreign capital, ideas, images, and goods were being funneled into even very remote areas as the resources were being harvested for export.  Yet the area of Mexico in which I work is very hard to farm mechanically due to thin soils.  I am interested in a number of questions, such as: What effects did this area’s resources have on the destinations of the exports, and vice versa?  Did the eventual failure of the agricultural industries relate strictly to environmental problems or was it affected by continuing Caste War violence?

What will this project contribute to anthropology?

Globalization continues today, and it’s important to understand its beginning to fully understand current processes. A particularly germane aspect of globalization is the movement of people. Although Cancun is a quickly-developing tourist area, the Mexican state underfunds the Yucatan Peninsula.  The government projects that are funded tend to focus on natural pools known as cenotes and cultural wealth, such as the large-scale archaeological sites of the Classic-period Maya civilization.

This focus on large-scale cultural patrimony ignores the last several centuries of Mayan history.  Following the Classic period, the Maya have lived in settlements of various sizes – some large, some smaller – but without the monumental architecture that is seen as a hallmark of the Classic period.  Up to the 1970s, many people made their living through extraction of mahogany, dyewood, and chicle (natural chewing gum base). These industries were spread out on the landscape and lacked large concentrated factories, meaning travel and transportation were important to the livelihood of the Maya. The routes the Maya used tended to follow ancient roads because they were the best paths.

As the tourist industry grows, though, these ancient routes are being expanded for automobiles, destroying the old roads and narrow-gauge railroad lines. With destruction of these routes, the possibility of understanding the last centuries of the area goes with them. The people who worked in chicle production in the 1970s are aging, which means that one of our major sources of oral and written history will soon disappear.  Doing archaeology in this region will preserve this history, but it is imperative that the research be done now.

We hear a lot about Classic-period Maya, of course.  Why focus on this particular time period?

Ruins of a sugar processing facility at Xuxub (credit: John Gust)

As you know, there has been a longstanding bias pretty much worldwide towards larger sites with elite contexts, and that continues in some ways today in the Maya area. In terms of the Historic period, there has been little archaeology in Mexico generally.  The archaeology that has been done is problematic – much of it has aided reconstruction of large, primarily Spanish or otherwise white-owned settlements.  There has been basically no research focused on the lives of the non-elite – the average Maya. Past historical archaeology projects, for example, have told us what a building looked like 300 years ago but do not tell us about the people forced to build it.

My project is important because it looks squarely at the common people in the area – people who worked at sugar plantations and whose life histories are otherwise lost.  Archaeology will help us tell their stories.

How John accesses the ruins (credit: John Gust)

The fact that John’s project focuses on the commoners is particularly compelling for me, since my own bioarchaeological research deals with understanding the non-elite of a civilization that was large and understood through the eyes of the elite.

If you’re interested in funding his research, he needs just $200 more to finish his dissertation research.  For a $40 contribution, you get your very own pint glass with the logo of his research team on it.  And, be honest, every good archaeologist has a growing stash of pint glasses!  John notes that funding beyond his goal will go towards the costs associated with the project – namely, costs associated with traveling to and accessing the field site.

So come on over and #SciFund scientific research and help affect a revolution in how scientists interact with the world around them!