The first Rockethub.com SciFund campaign has ended and I was honored and excited to participate!

My deepest thanks goes out to the 32 family members, friends, and trusting environmental stewards who generously contributed to my project “Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs.” In sum, we received 34 contributions from 32 fuelers, totaling $1,815.00. This is a HUGE SUCCESS!!!

Click here to see Levi’s Project & Video : Saving Hawaii’s Coral Reefs from Levi Lewis on Vimeo.

Of 50 SciFund projects, ours was in the top 25% for total contributions. These gifts provide the means to purchase and maintain field equipment needed to complete 4 major research projects in 2012. These projects will (1) provide important information about coral reef dynamics and (2) lead to the successful completion of my PhD. I can’t thank my fuelers enough for their generosity in making my SciFund Project successful.

SciFund, as a whole, was also a whopping success. We had 1,440 generous benefactors donate $76,230 to our scientific efforts. This research is taking place at over 40 different universities on 6/7 major continents on our planet.

SciFund Projects in North America

Am I happy that I participated in SciFund?

YES!

I’m not big on either self-promotion or asking others for financial support; both of these make me very uncomfortable. However, I am committed to pushing myself beyond my boundaries of comfort, so I decided to give it a shot and see how it goes.

In addition, participating seemed like a valuable venture for several reasons: (1) I truly believe in the cause, (2) it’s cool to be a trailblazer in anything new and exciting, (3) I have lots of great people in my life that might enjoy getting involved with my work (4) it’s a fun way to inform the folks about environmental issues, (5) I get to create & amp; give out fun gifts, and (6) perhaps it would provide some important financial fuel for my dissertation research.

SciFund makes research happen!

All of these reasons still hold true; some more so than I expected. Each one has been beyond fully accomplished and I wouldn’t have it any other way. For now, however, I’ll need to put away my crowdfunding gear–there’s no way my pride can afford asking for contributions again anytime soon. That said, I highly recommend this as a means of attaining research support for any students or researchers to whom reasons 1-6 (above) apply.