[DIYbio] Re: DIYBio crowdfunding campaign to conduct algae research for bioremediation and biopolymers

Can you help with a crowdfunding campaign for DIYbio research on algae bioremediation of the Salton Sea?

Friends,

As a member of the DIYBio community for a few years and an active member at Biocurious for the last two, I've been focusing part of my time on the development of opensource tools and protocols for algae research.  We are making slow but steady progress at Biocurious and we are publishing our information on our WIKI (also links to Google Group and other resources where we share information publicly).

Recently, a friend and I started a non-profit called Blue Nomad Foundation, which was spawned from the work at Biocurious.  Our mission is to fund research to develop technologies to use algae to bioremediate polluted water sources and use the biomass for biopolymer development and educate the public. Our plan is to fund the development of these technologies and make the IP freely available. 

We are putting together a crowdfunding campaign to raise money to fund initial research in DIYBio spaces.  We hope to provide resources for memberships, equipment and reagents to facilities which can define projects consistent with our mission.  As a passionate member of this community with a lot of time invested in it, I believe that demonstrating that we can work towards solving real global problems will go a long way towards allaying some of the public fears about our work.  Our goal is to raise $40k and gain visibility in the press and alert the public to this approach.   We also intend to raise more significant money from foundations down the road to fund projects with academic algae researchers.  At Biocurious, I've been working to integrate other projects with institutional labs and I think this effort with BNF can do the same. I'm very keen to open the pipes between institutions and DIYBio to created blended research projects (if you care to learn more, feel free to write me separately).

So, I'm seeking opinions from this community on ways that our non-profit can craft our crowdfunding campaign to be consistent with the community interests and help DIYBio achieve our goals.  FYI, we were thinking of ways that we can use the campaign to contribute more to the community.  One thought which Patrik D suggested was to hold a DIYBio camp down at the Salton Sea where we could go on site to do some extremophile bioprospecting and hold talks on bioremediation and research there.  We could also discuss our work at Biocurious on algae genetic engineering, the protocols we are using, and what we've learned to date.  FYI, the Salton Sea is where BNF will focus our initial algae bioremediation efforts and has a lot of interesting environmental challenges. 

Finally, I want to ensure that we reach our $40k threshold.  Do any of you have thoughts on how BNF could reach this goal so that we can give back to the community?  I'm open to all ideas!

Thanks!

Cameron