Funding
From the very beginning we knew that the participation at the iGEM HS competition would be very expensive. There were a lot of costs increasing during our work. Lab supplies like chemicals, enzymes and oligonucleotides cost a lot of money. There were also team registration fees for the competition and the Giant Jamboree as well as travel and accommodation costs in Boston.
For all this, it was neccessary to gather a lot of funds. For us high school students it was not an easy task. We had to find a lot of sponsors and donators. We tried to collect as much money as we could, gradually. First we focused on sponsor contracts. We made a list of the most successful companies in Slovenia and then the contracts were sent to them. We focused also on municipalities from Slovenia. We were also logged on a national tender for financing research and scientific work.
On the other hand, we were searching also alternative ways of financing our project. In this respect, we have made a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo. We can conclude that this campaign was successful.
On this occasion, we would like to thank again all our sponsors and donators for their kind support. Big thank is also going to our mentors at the National Institute of Chemistry (NIC), Slovenia, and at the Chair of Biochemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology (FCCT), University of Ljubljana. The two graphs below show the structure of financing our project.
Expenses (30.450 €)
Receipts (30.450 €)
We had a lot of donors but we had only one sponsor; we thank SLIKOPLESKARSTVO MARKO ŽELEZNIK s.p. for their contribution.