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This is the big problem for me. Even a "hit" crowd funded project is a pretty tiny slice of a real grant, and still takes time and energy.

It is on the other hand great to let a PhD student get some funding for their work, pay for a field visit, etc. Crowd funding is a supplement to internal grants and pilot grants at this point, not the NIH/NSF lifeblood of most labs.



Don't administrative fees and tuition suck up a huge percent of grant money?

Could crowdfunding get so much more bang for the buck, as compared with traditional funding?


Yes they do, but I wonder if those still apply in this case or not. At the end of the day, it is still money coming into the university.

Edit: To answer my own question, funds are currently not subject to university overhead according to their FAQ.


The funds aren't currently subject to overhead according to the funder, but that seriously demotivates grant staff to shepherd a tiny little grant that isn't particularly helping.

That's what I meant by more trouble than it's worth. A staff member going "meh" can turn into a huge time sink.


It's not so much "fees" in the traditional sense. When a grant is awarded, a researcher is asking for what are known as "Direct Costs" - the costs of staff, certain types of equipment, reagents, patient recruitment, travel and publication fees, etc.

This is not how much money goes to the university. The university negotiates an overhead rate, which gets tacked onto the cost. This can often be more than half the cost of the grant. This helps cover indirect costs - the costs of administrative staff, copier paper, computing infrastructure, startup funds for new faculty, etc.

"More bang for the buck" assumes the researcher would get that overhead back for their own use. What actually happens is researchers get the same direct costs, the overhead % is zero, etc.

For minor grants, like where crowd funding is now, this isn't such a big deal. But if this somehow became the dominant paradigm, the overhead costs are going to have to come from somewhere...




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