I open a new thread, reposting an idea of other thread in which we started to speak about grants/money/whatsoever.
Why not a crowdfounding campaign to renovate the IT infrastructure of Rosetta@Home? A lot of sites create campaigns for free, and little rewards for donations may be not so expansives.
How many dollars cost a little cluster of servers for web and DB? 40k $? 50K?
"A rose for Rosy" may be a title :-P

Admins, what do you think?

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I think the admins and scientists get enough from its contributors and maybe time they should be giving something back so, NO to further contributions.

I think the admins and scientists get enough from its contributors and maybe time they should be giving something back so, NO to further contributions.

Speak for yourself, I'll gladly donate more if a properly organized crowdfunding campaign were held. I think this is a great idea boboviz, hoping the admins take notice and forward it to the appropriate parties.

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**38 cores crunching for R@H on behalf of cancercomputer.org - a non-profit supporting High Performance Computing in Cancer Research

I think the admins and scientists get enough from its contributors and maybe time they should be giving something back so, NO to further contributions.

Speak for yourself, I'll gladly donate more if a properly organized crowdfunding campaign were held. I think this is a great idea boboviz, hoping the admins take notice and forward it to the appropriate parties.

I was under the impression I was speakng for myself and expressing my own opinion.

As for your opinion "A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted"

[quote]
I think the admins and scientists get enough from its contributors and maybe time they should be giving something back so, NO to further contributions.
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As for your opinion "A Fool And His Money Are Soon Parted"

@Betting Slip - Reading through a few pages of the 70 or so posts you have made on these forums I'm extremely hard pressed to find any where you have said or contributed a single positive thing; Indeed, in most of your posts you sound almost constantly miserable, disgruntled, and incredibly cynical about basically everything.

I really truly feel bad for you. I hope you can find a resolution to whatever it is in your daily life that is the cause of your seemingly constant irritability and negativity.

We're all here because we want to make a difference, maybe try to keep sight of that before spewing any more negativity onto these boards.

Just ignore his post if he bothers you. He is entitled to whatever opinion he wants. Just because you don't like what he says, you treat him with disdain and IMO makes you look like a tool.

Come on, boys, no flames. We are here to help the project/science.
I think that it's a good idea if admin publish a report of donations but, until then, a crowdfunding may be a solution

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Keeping in mind that I am a public volunteer, just like all of you, I wonder if we might flush this idea out a bit and tie a bow on it and offer it to BakerLab. That is not to say they wish to pursue the idea nor make any other impression of what might (or not) happen with it, I do not know that. But, I'd be glad to brainstorm with you and point them to a more complete concept. I'll just say that sometimes the handling of money in such organizations is complex and so definitely do not just haul off and do something under their name without their explicit permission to do so.

I can see that people might be very willing to contribute when you emphasize how the money spent on these servers gets amplified thousands of times in the computing effort the project receives via BOINC. I can also see that some people that have never heard of R@h might begin crunching once they hear about it.

Does anyone have experience with crowdfunding projects? Such a project will need someone to advise, and manage it. Is anyone in a position to volunteer to hold such a position?

Does anyone have PR experience that might be able to help create press releases to draw attention to such a campaign?

Most crowdfunding projects have some sort of item that you can buy or rewards for levels you buy in to. What might be appropriate items to use in this way?

3D printed proteins?
The first FDA approved generic flu shots?
Their name (business name, memorial name) on a series of BOINC work units?
Guided tour of the UW Protein Lab and dinner with the staff?

Perhaps the campaign presents a thousand proteins that need to be studied, and when you buy one of them you get the 3D printed model of what the prediction looks like, and your name on the WUs for it? Buy 5 and you get the tour too.

What do you think of these? Let's come up with some more ideas.

If you like the 3D printed models idea as being part of the campaign, do any of you have 3D printers that could volunteer to make some of them if the model files are sent to you?

What other critical elements of a crowdfunding campaign are there that need to be covered by a volunteer?

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

2y ago, Ibercivis (spanish boinc project) uses a little crowdfounding (3500 euros) to buy some hw for their server. They use a free platform and insert a video of admins to help the campaign, using also FB, Twitter and other socials.

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I'll just say that sometimes the handling of money in such organizations is complex and so definitely do not just haul off and do something under their name without their explicit permission to do so.

This is obvious. Only R@H admins can launch the campaign.
And only admins know how much money is needed to.

3D printed proteins?

Great

Guided tour of the UW Protein Lab and dinner with the staff?

It would be great, but i live in Italy.... :-P

T-shirts, mugs with printed protein, http://www.ilovesciencestore.com/, etc

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I guess the best place for crowdfunding a scientific project is experiment.com.

I'm not quite sure if this site only supports "experiments" or also "experimental projects".

Have a look at https://experiment.com/discover/biology

I would also be aware of the possibility that U. of W. is at the limit of what their scientists/students can do. The server limitations might be a convenient gate-keeper for them. But you can always ask, and see what they need.

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Their name (business name, memorial name) on a series of BOINC work units?

While I think all of your suggested perks are great, this one is especially awesome because it has a very low cost to provide (it's just data entry when naming a query) but carries enough value that it could be a perk for a decent price level ($50 or $100 donations, etc.)

Does anyone have experience with crowdfunding projects? Such a project will need someone to advise, and manage it.
...
Does anyone have PR experience that might be able to help create press releases to draw attention to such a campaign?

I think this could go in two basic directions, one would be an open crowdfunding campaign on a public crowdfunding site, in which case yes the PR coordination, etc. would be needed. The benefit is it would potentially bring in much more support, and raise awareness around Rosetta@Home/BOINC potentially leading to more crunchers, the drawback is it would require much more work to create and manage, fulfill perks, etc.

The second direction, which may be simpler (not necessarily better) would be to implement a fundraising thermometer on the front page that is directly linked to whatever payment processing API the admins wish to use (A number of PHP based thermometers exist that interface with PayPal for example, like this one)
The benefit is it would create a specific goal and a way to visualize progress towards that goal, transparency around project funding, along with visualizing one's own contribution, while requiring little management work compared to a full blown public crowdfunding campaign. The down side is it would only tap the existing Rosetta@Home user base for support, wouldn't include cool perks, etc.

I would also be aware of the possibility that U. of W. is at the limit of what their scientists/students can do. The server limitations might be a convenient gate-keeper for them.

?? Work queue is full of work every day, app is update (quite) frequently with new functions, team publish scientific papers, etc. So, i'm not agree with you.

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I would also be aware of the possibility that U. of W. is at the limit of what their scientists/students can do. The server limitations might be a convenient gate-keeper for them.

?? Work queue is full of work every day, app is update (quite) frequently with new functions, team publish scientific papers, etc. So, i'm not agree with you.

Maybe. But I don't think servers cost that much in terms of their overall budget, and they have a really good reputation in the scientific community. So if they really wanted more, they could probably write up a proposal for some federal agency, and they would be funded more. In fact, it would help their request for funding if they could show that their servers are maxed out now. But I am not saying they don't want crowdfunding, just that it has to fit in their overall plans.

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So if they really wanted more, they could probably write up a proposal for some federal agency, and they would be funded more. In fact, it would help their request for funding if they could show that their servers are maxed out now. But I am not saying they don't want crowdfunding, just that it has to fit in their overall plans.

I thinked like you, but after this of Kripton i start to change my position about Rosetta's access to money.

And no admins write here :-(

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And no admins write here :-(

Maybe they could fill us in on their situation, and for what purposes they would use the money. I am sure a lot of people would be willing to contribute.

(The federal government spends a large amount of money on medical research, but maybe not at their level.)

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Sorry for the delay in replies, CASP has been taking most of my time. =[

I've requested a full history of donations for rosetta@home. I've also contacted our system admin people to figure out how money we'll need for upgrades.

We'll have a report soon!

And no admins write here :-(

Maybe they could fill us in on their situation, and for what purposes they would use the money. I am sure a lot of people would be willing to contribute.

(The federal government spends a large amount of money on medical research, but maybe not at their level.)

I've requested a full history of donations for rosetta@home. I've also contacted our system admin people to figure out how money we'll need for upgrades.

We'll have a report soon!

Great!!!

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Since 2011 the donate button has raised $1,231 for Rosetta@home related things. This isn't quite enough to do any major upgrades...

We have 5 webserver, 1 database and 1 filesystem server. We'd want to at minimum upgrade the database and filesystem server. I'm still talking to the system admin people to get a estimate of how much money we'd need. But, once you start adding large data storage and lots of memory for SQL databases, these things could get really expensive!