A growing number of universities see crowdfunding as a powerful tool to boost fundraising and leading university Berkeley is preparing to join the list. In a recent posting the University of California Berkeley has revealed they intend on launching a campus wide crowdfunding platform in the spring of 2015. Coming under the auspices of the Office of Annual Programs and reporting to Direct Response Marketing, the new position is expected to manage the forthcoming platform launch. The responsibilities require the individual to be “the champion for Berkeley crowdfunding and giving day efforts, reaching out to campus partners, guiding them to develop and execute successful fundraising campaigns. Additionally the university will ask the new manager to launch an “online day of giving campaign”.
Berkeley has taken a leading role in the crowdfunding space as noted crowdfunding researcher Dr. Richard Swart is the Director for the Program for Innovation in Entrepreneurial & Social Finance at the Fung Institute at UC Berkeley. Swart leads a research team that is studying how crowdfunding and other forms of alternative finance are changing the world of startup funding, SME finance, and investing opportunities created by P2P and P2B models.
