Our Crowdfunding Groups
Yes! We have reached our initial goal of $15k for a 6-week consulting contract, but each additional $2500 pays for another week of progress and indicates to the university how important BugGuide is. While the FundISU fundraiser has completed, you can still give using the Donate tab on BugGuide.net.
Just around the corner are a new mobile-friendly website, identification recommendations based on artificial intelligence (to free up our volunteers from identifying the very common insects over and over), and more integration with other projects with similar goals. For this to happen, we need to engage very smart people to help us release BugGuide 2.0, and smart people are expensive. $15k will fund a 6-week consulting contract. $90k will fund one year of a full-time web developer.
Think about what BugGuide would look like with a solid foundation of funding underneath it. With full-time staff working on development instead of John working nights and weekends. With a half-time staff member working on collaboration with other projects and agencies like iNaturalist and LepSnap and the Nature Conservancy and the Xerces Society and USGS and others. BugGuide could be so much more!
BugGuide is an online community of naturalists who enjoy learning about and sharing our observations of insects and other related creatures. If you want to know more about an insect, you can submit a picture of it to BugGuide and the community will tell you what it is and direct you to a BugGuide page that will tell you all about it. So far over a million insects have been identified and over 34,000 people have contributed.
BugGuide is funded solely by donations. Yet it is a critical part of the scientific infrastructure for North American insect information, and has even led to the discovery of new species. As national priorities shift away from scientific research, you have a chance to give directly to where real research is happening without layers of bureaucracy. In fact, for this fundraiser the ISU Foundation (which handles donations for BugGuide) has even waived its administrative fee!
Kids are increasingly caught up in their devices instead of exploring the natural world. BugGuide is kid-friendly and welcomes youth who are interested in insects. Help the next generation have a rich encyclopedia of insect information to explore. And, far from rejecting technology, we want to harness it to help us learn more about our world.
There has never been a more critical time to give to BugGuide. Thank you for your support!
If you are interested in the latest developments with BugGuide including analysis of how the community is doing, you might want to read John's presentation given September 18: BugGuide.net in an age of artificial intelligence.
These insects are very noticeable when they all emerge at the same time. Your donation to Bugguide at this level will also be noticeable when combined with all the other donations. Six legs rule!!
Will it be a hard winter or not? How will we know without the woolly bear? Your donation at this level will help keep BugGuide warm all winter by paying for an hour of an undergraduate student.
These tiny bugs have a very large bite. A donation at this level will have a large impact on BugGuide by buying an hour of graduate student time.
This confident dragonfly swoops in and gets the job done. A donation at this level pays for one hour of a professional developer to bring BugGuide 2.0 to fruition.
Many grants require matching funds. Giving at the Seed Bug level gives BugGuide a pool of matching funds that can be leveraged to obtain outside funding.
Stealthy and difficult to find, it only takes one of these to amaze and enthrall, and to make a big difference. Help BugGuide introduce a love for the natural world by giving at this level.