Funding, Grants & Awards | News

UCLA Launches Crowdfunding Platform for Faculty, Student Organization Projects

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 02/19/14

The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has launched a crowdfunding platform designed to help raise money for faculty and student organization projects.

Dubbed UCLA Spark, the platform "utilizes social media to connect donors with faculty and students campus-wide, introducing them to the broad scope of research and programmatic activities," at the university, according to a UCLA news release.

"We recognized the need to address some of the more unique funding opportunities that provide vital resources to a myriad of projects and promote them in a fresh, new way," said Nancy Katano, executive director of corporate, foundation and research relations at UCLA, in a prepared statement.

Projects currently seeking funding on UCLA Spark include:

• Girls in Motion, a project to help high school students at UCLA Community School develop and launch a mobile app;
• One Bus, One Cause, a plan to send buses of 50 volunteers throughout Los Angeles "to address important community needs," according to the Spark site;
• An effort to save the historic Watts Towers;
• The UCLA Sex Squad 2014 School Tour, a sexual health education program; and
• An effort to expand cancer care research in Ethiopia, a country with 90 million people and only four oncologists, according to the project's Spark page.

"UCLA faculty and official student organizations now have at their disposal an important tool to inspire and connect with our alumni, donors and the public at large in a meaningful way — contributing directly to their projects and fueling their success," said Jarrett Oakley, assistant director of UCLA Spark, in a prepared statement.

More information is available at spark.ucla.edu.