Giving back to the university just got a little more personalized.
VOLstarter is a newly-established crowd-funding site that allows students and departments to promote projects in need of funding while also providing UT donors the option to choose exactly where their money goes. Organized by the Office of Alumni Affairs, the website is currently supporting 23 projects, ranging from traveling opportunities for aspiring student artists to helping improve adult literacy rates across Tennessee.
Kristen Watt, a UT alumni aide, said VOLstarter as a more efficient alternative to past mediums for university donations.
“We wanted to establish a platform that was user friendly and really try crowd-funding again this year in a much more engaging way,” Watt said. She also said that VOLstarter was partially inspired by the site Kickstarter and its ability to easily fund specific projects.
In addition to adding a more engaging element to the donation process, Watt said that each project includes a short video explaining its objective and monetary goals.
“(The videos) give kind of a personal feel to the project, and a face to it and really get their idea across for what they want to accomplish,” she said.
Jessica Boles, a senior in electrical engineering, is currently seeking funding for the organization Systers: Women in EECS through VOLstarter. Boles said she hopes to increase the presence of women engineers on campus with the help of alumni funding.
“A lot of times with our society today, (women) feel like (engineering) is just a boy thing, even though they may be really good at it and might not understand exactly what it is,” Boles said. “We didn’t know where we were going to get our funding, and so when we saw the opportunity for VOLstarter, we were pretty excited.”
Boles has currently received $217 of her $800 goal to create a viral video promoting female engineers.
Brooks Clark, project manager of alumni communications, said he hopes the site will help to expand the number of donors to the university even if their contributions are small.
“It’s the power of the numbers,” Clark said. “If you can only give $5, that is important.”
In coordination with the national effort “Giving Tuesday,” Clark hopes that potential donors will choose to spend for the benefit of others in the wake of the commercial holidays Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
“Here’s an opportunity to give back, even a small amount,” Clark said. “One of the goals of VOLstarter is to increase the number of our donors … It’s not about the size of gifts, it’s about the number of people involved with investment at UT.”
