Suggest edit — Alumni Funder

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---
confidence: high
related:
- wiki/projects/accretive-collective-action.md
sources:
- raw/transcript.md
title: Alumni Funder
type: project
visibility: public
---

# Alumni Funder

Jacob built this. **Kickstarter for alumni to fund student projects.**

## The mechanism

> "I made alumni funder as well. It's like Kickstarter for alumni to fund student projects. And yeah, if it gets enough votes, then or enough donations, then the project gets kicked off. That's like an accretive mechanism."

The shape:
- Students post projects
- Alumni vote and/or donate
- At a critical mass of either, the project activates

## Why this is in the [[Accretive Collective Action]] family

Same template as the [[Accretive Collective Action|other accretive mechanisms]]: individual contribution is contingent on enough other people contributing. Removes the "my $20 doesn't matter" objection that suppresses alumni giving for student projects.

## The two signals

Two activation signals are interesting:
- **Votes** (signal of attention/approval)
- **Donations** (signal of commitment)

Either can activate, presumably with different threshold logic. The dual-signal design lets non-rich alumni still meaningfully participate (votes), while letting rich alumni accelerate (donations).

## Status

The transcript implies the project exists but doesn't specify usage / scale.

## Related

- [[Accretive Collective Action]] — the family this belongs to
- [[Learned Helplessness]] — the diagnosis that motivates the design