Fundraising

How UFSCar-Brasil managed to raise funds

Participate in iGEM demand structure, organization and support. From the assembly of the teams to the registration and participation in the Giant Jamboree, obtaining financial resources is one of the factors that enables the success of a project. Our team made great efforts over the year in the search for sponsors and donors for our project. Below we show different forms of fundraising.

We present the bacteria i & GEM, official mascots of the team, who assisted in collecting donations throughout the event SBPC!

The Brazilian Society for the Advancement of Science (Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência – SBPC http://www.sbpcnet.org.br/site/) organized the largest scientific event of the Latin America. THis event, named 67th SBPC Annual Meeting, took place between July 12th-18th of 2015, in the Federal University of São Carlos’ campus with the main theme "Light, Science and Action", a reference to the International Year of Light (http://www.light2015.org/Home.html), and inclueded more than 10 thousand people daily roaming around the event’s activities.

It was in this context that we gave life to our mascots, which walked through the event’s facilities provoking curiousity not only the children, but also in the adults who struggled to figure out the meaning of the costumes. By the way, many of them figured it out! However, others guessed things like carrots and cacti...

Sponsors List

In January and February, the team's efforts were intended to raise the amount required to pay the Team registration. We prepared a list of 245 companies of various sizes and areas and made contact via email with these potential partners by sending a portfolio that explained our achievements in 2014 and our goals in 2015.

Among the contacts, we received few replies. Some companies have helped us with the supply of reactants and equipment. In some meetings, it became clear the impact that competition has in the world, as well as the grandeur of the iGEM projects. It was demonstrated by the interest of a company to get to know synthetic biology. Even so, the fact we did not have a prototype of the repellent difficult obtaining support.

The team tried to present the project to a large manufacturer of repellents, but there was no interest. Finally, a few weeks before the registration deadline of participants for the Giant Jamboree, Libbs pharmaceutical company offered us support, making it possible to send five of our students to Boston.

Donations

A significant portion of our resources came through online donations (known in Brazil as "Vakinha"). In addition, the team held a fundraising task force at UFSCar for months. Team members took turns in visiting various University departments asking for contributions to our piggy bank. This approach to people explained the competition, the importance of our participation and our project mobilized the community. Donations we got were essential to our registration for the competition, in addition to disclosing both iGEM and Synthetic Biology across the University.

We announced our support requests on our Facebook page. We received donations from different regions of Brazil, as well as from members of other iGEM teams. With the resources of online donations, we were able to buy primers and other inputs.

Our money box!

Selling chocolates

In Brazil, both brigadeiro as Easter eggs are traditional and extremely popular candies. Selling them mobilized the team and had some importance in fundraising.

We sold brigadeiros in the busiest places in the University: restaurant, snack bars, offices and library. We innovated the traditional candy with the creation of brigadeiro limonene, which had lemon flavor and referred to bug-shoo. The sale of brigadeiro was a success!

Besides the brigadeiros, we also sold Easter eggs in March and April. We announced the sale on Facebook and we had some orders. The team met to make chocolate eggs. We have not had much success in this attempt to get money, since most buyers were close friends and family.

And in August, we raffled a basket of chocolates. We sold about 180 numbers and raised a considerable sum.

IMPACT: besides obtaining resources, the sale of chocolates has always provided us opportunities to talk to many people about our Bug Shoo project and Synthetic Biology.

Institutional support

Our University has supported us with sufficient resources to pay for registrations (for the team and for 2 individual team members) and airline ticket for 1 team member.