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Today, the NCF Science and Stewardship Department is venturing into exciting and unknown territory.  We are participating in the #SciFund Challenge to raise money to study spotted turtles at Medouie Creek.  If you look back over our posts from the last week, you’ll read all about spotted turtles and the large wetland restoration project we are conducting at Medouie Creek on Nantucket.

So what is #SciFund? (Note the hashtag – if you are on twitter, search this hashtag to see lots of information from people participating in this challenge). #SciFund is basically an experiment to train scientists to talk about their research with the public and to help scientists raise money for research using crowdfunding. You’ve probably heard of kickstarter.com where people post project ideas for all sorts of things, from film making to ideas for building apps.  Once the project is posted online, the project designer reaches out to their friends and their friends friends for contributions to make the project a reality in exchange for rewards and involvement in the project.  In the scientific world, we typically fund research through individual grants from federal, state or private organizations.  This kind of support is starting to vanish as so many young scientists enter the field and research dollars decrease.  Crowdfunding is another outlet to search for project funding that also lets many people actively participate in a research project who otherwise may never have ever heard of the project.

#SciFund is crowdfunding for scientific research and NCF Science & Stewardship just got involved!  We are running a funding campaign, starting today, to raise money to study populations of spotted turtles at Medouie Creek on Nantucket!  This is your chance to participate directly in our research.  Anyone who helps fund this project will receive a monthly newsletter and learn all about how we actually study turtle populations.  You could even have the chance to have a turtle named after you!  Just click the link below to learn more about our project.

Spotted Turtles and Salt Marsh Restoration

Crowdfunding success is based on sharing so if you are interested in this work, please share our link via Facebook or Twitter!
You can also keep following this blog, “like” us on Facebook (Nantucket Conservation Foundation) or follow us on twitter (@NCFScience) to keep up with project progress.