The Anonymous Widower

Crowd Funding For Research

I sometimes get involved in helping research projects at Liverpool University and I will also lob small amounts of funding towards projects I think are worthwhile.

I also look into innovative ways of raising funding for individuals and businesses, like Zopa and Funding Circle. I also loan money to the Developing World using Kiva.

So can their methods be used to raise funding for research projects.

Let’s take a researcher interested in how patients manage with the gluten-free diet, they need for coeliac disease. They perhaps want to interview as many patients as possible and produce a report that highlights both the problems and the successes, possibly on a regional basis.

So they have two needs.

A small amount of money is probably required, the size of which would depend on the size and scape of the project.

The second thing, that many projects, like the mythical one I outlined, often need subjects for the research.

Surely, a properly designed system could do both.

Similar things have been done under the general heading of crowd funding. There’s more here on Wikipedia.

How would such a system work? I would steal some of the methodology from sites like Zopa and Kiva.

The on-line system would be uploaded with suitable research projects, which borrowing from Zopa’s methods, would be checked as to the veracity of the researcher.

Prospective funders and participants would join and then search for projects, they might like to support, just like you search for suitable borrowers on Kiva.

Obviously, you could also rate researchers, just as you rate buyers and sellers on eBay.

There are some obvious winners, if this could be made to work!

I know from those in Universities, I’ve talked with, that getting funding for small projects is difficult and a lot of time and money is wasted.

Are there going to be any losers? Not directly, but I suspect some charities and their inefficient structures might be by-passed.

I will probably not develop the system, but someone will! On the other hand, if anybody wants to, I’ll be happy to advise.

February 7, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | Finance, World | Charity, Kiva, Research, University, Zopa