Aidan,
Is this a university club project? There are plenty of options
there. When I was at UCF our SEDS club managed to get good funding
from local companies and the university. If it is on your own I have
to say $7.5k isn't much. I could swing that on a part time job or
some freelance work. It might delay my projects some but I would have
the money. It you were needing $75k or $750k then it is a bigger problem.
Thomas
On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 10:38 PM, Aidan Sojourner <aidan@xxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:aidan@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
How do you guys get funding for your projects? My team has a
wonderful design that will probably never see the light of day due
to lack of funds. We are expecting upwards of $7.5k for the
project, something that none of us can manage.
We have thought about kickstarter, but I personally don't see the
appeal. Why would someone donate $100 for ANOTHER PERSON to go do
something? It's a donation, sure, but what does the donator get
out of it? For Video Games/Movies/other content, the donate gets
the content. This is why Kickstarter is successful in this
category. What exactly does the donator get in our case, save for
a magnificent view of earth from onboard our project? I would
never pay $10, let alone $100 for that, and I don't know anyone
else who would.
Another option is a capital investment from a single source. How
would you convince someone to give you $7.5k to send a sounding
rocket to 200,000 feet? The same with kickstarter, what exactly
would they get out of it? CSXT got a lot of funding from the
GoFast energy drink company. How did Ky manage to swing this? Was
it simply because it was a large, historic event? The recent
"Aeropac 100k" project in 2012 got funding from Google, I believe
since Google wanted to do a commerical based on the project. In
both of these examples, the donator got their name heard. (google
has not yet, although I hear they are going to release the
commerical sometime this fall) Everyone in the rocketry community
heard of the "GoFast Rocket", and the google commercial will
likely bring more revenue in sales than they spent.
</wall of text>
Maybe I seem negative. What have you guys tried/thought about? I
am open to any suggestions, and I would love to get this project
started.
