Future for Coral: Highlights and behind the scenes

            I’m back at the Atlantic. Its February and a moody sky watches over the dramatic churning of waters frustrated by winter winds. The air temperature is about 9 degrees and the water temperature is about 11. Yesterday I received over £7000, which has put an end to over 2 years of financial insecurity and means I can finally knuckle down and get my work published. I didn’t receive the money from a wealthy foundation or a scholarship for my academic excellence, but from a crowd of well-wishers and concerned ocean lovers.

            Crowdfunding is both an incredibly novel and an age-old invention. In essence it is no different from any sponsorship drive; you tell people what you want money for and if they like your idea, they give what they feel. The difference is the tool of social media, which has allowed this well-worn technique to bloom and reach new heights. ‘Future for Coral’ was my first ever attempt at crowdfunding and in many respects, my first time to really interact with social media in a serious manner. I thought I’d share some of experience from my point of view as the, now jubilant, owner of the campaign.

The Atlantic in February

            Since the financial crash in 2008 it has felt like convention funding, for almost everything, has dried up. My supervisor looked into figures for deep-sea marine biology and found that available funds have dropped to a third (70% reduction) of what was available 4 years ago. Two years ago, I found out my PhD funding had been pulled. My friend Andrew was visiting me in Kenya, where I was working at the time, and offered me some money to help. I felt terrible; the thought of taking money from a friend. He explained that he and his wife Emma thought that my work was worth it, so I should take the money. I cautiously agreed, and from there an idea was planted.

             When I returned to the UK in May last year, my funding was still a mess. I decided I needed to do the crowdfunding idea. I watched Amanda Palmer’s TED talk on the ‘art of asking’ a dozen times and set off to Cornwall in July to film the promo video with my mate Mike. The reason it took nearly 6 months before I ran the campaign was a combination of desperate hope that some money would come in soon and terror about putting my work and myself on a pedestal for all to see. Several grant rejections later I decided to go live with Future for Coral.

Filming in more clement weather

            The most important thing in any social media exercise is ‘reach’. This means how many people are seeing your ‘content’, be it the webpage, article or whatever. This much I knew before I started. What I had no idea about was how hard it is to extend one’s reach. You cannot simply put something up on the net and expect people to access it. I put up the campaign, told all my friends about it saw the readership start going up and the first donations go in and felt pretty good about myself, so I sat back a bit to watch. Rooky error. The excitement died down and nothing happened.

            At this point I realised with horror that I was in the position I had feared would happen all those months of thinking about doing this; all my friends and colleagues watching while I floundered. In panicked desperation I started to send messages and tweets to everyone I could think of. Every time I did it felt like I was inviting one more person to watch me fail, but I couldn’t stop. I had to make this work. Readership went up a few more donations went in, and then it stopped again. This pattern continued for the first 3 weeks of the campaign. Even at the two-week mark, when I received a fantastic donation from Somerville college of £2000, it still felt like I was treading water. Not until the final week did the social media reach a tipping point and the content started to generate its own reach. The graphs below show readership on the platform over time and donations. The graph about readership also tracks my emotions over the past few weeks pretty well too!

            The second most important factor in crowdfunding is the content. Can you put up something that people will ‘like’, ‘share’ and of course most importantly donate to? As a scientist I am used to expressing my ideas carefully, noting my uncertainty, over several pages. All of a sudden I have 140 characters to convince you that what I’m doing is important and you should give money to it. Yikes! This, however, was much more fun than promotion. It was great getting to wax lyrical openly and freely to my growing band of fans. Initially I thought people would be interested in the human aspect of coral reef decline or the personal aspect of my work. Turns out people went crazy for underwater factoids and pretty pictures, so I adapted my content as I went along, and in the end it was the stuff that most excites me as well.

            Apart from just beating my drum on social media I went out and did a few stunts as well. The first was to paste my bedroom window with Future for Coral stuff. I got so sick of staring at Twitter that I needed some art and craft therapy and through this ended up getting an article in the Oxford Mail! I gave a talk at my graduate college, which I thoroughly enjoyed and then was bowled over when the college decided to give me £2000 and write an article about me for the alumnus network. I was starting to feel pretty cool. My final stunt was to set up a stall at the East Oxford Community Market and spent a lovely morning chatting to people about my work and various tangents on this, while giving out free baked goodies. To my complete surprise George Monbiot, the famous Guardian columnist walked past with his family. “George, will you please retweet something for me?” I blurted as he tried to buy some veggies. He agreed and that evening my final video update was tweeted to his 116,000 followers. After that, my social media grew on its own.    

           

         So in the end I achieved my goal despite spending most of the time not really believing I would. It is of course thanks to 80 or so wonderful individuals who gave me money over the 4 weeks. As a scientist I wanted to understand a bit more about who gave and why, so here’s a few factoids about the donors.

Proportion of donations from different groups

• Proportion of page visitors who donated – 5% (apparently this is about the average)
• I received 50 pledges from friends and acquaintances, 22 from random people who liked the campaign, 2 from academic sources, and 4 secret donors, including one secret donation of £850. I am dying to know who this was! (The amount raised by these different groups is in the pie chart.)
• The average donation by friends was £61.40 and from randomers was £47.95. These amounts were closer together than I had expected.

So now that the campaign is done I will go back to a quieter life of analysing data and writing for conservation groups. I can’t wait! However, I cannot get over the amazing feeling of seeing thousands of people reading my facebook page or the incredible words of encouragement and excitement from people willing you to succeed. If you want to continue to follow my story, check this blog from time to time. I will also keep the facebook and twitter going, but at a much slower rate than the last few weeks. Thank you once again to everyone. Every encouraging word, facebook share, retweet and of course donation, has made this a reality.