What is LongTail Grants?

LongTail Grants is an online platform that allows any individual to raise money, awareness, or guidance for an academic grant, scholastic competition, or another smart or socially-concsious project.

 
The LongTail Grants community is comprised of individuals who are part of countless creative, innovative, important projects that improve our world.
LongTail Grants is a philosophy that a great number of small ideas, when taken together, add up to make immeasurable differences.

We focus on academic grants and other smart things because we believe that supporting our students, professors, and scholars with their projects now can make a big difference for the future.

You need money for your academic project, or want to enter a scholastic competition, or need funds for research, or want to improve the world somehow... we want to help you.

Here at LongTail Grants, you can start a profile page that will allow you to:

• Raise money for your scholastic or socially beneficial project.  No matter how big or small.
• Collect fees for an ongoing community activity
• Build awareness for your project
• Get volunteers for your project
• Solicit advice from experts who may be able to assist with the project’s implementation
• Update your friends, family, and social network on your progress
• Thank all the people who donated to your project and helped make it a reality
• Create an online presence and advertise with physical flyers

As a visitor to the site, you can:

• Search and learn about academic research, or scholastic competitions, or school trips, or other smart or socially beneficial projects that are of interest to you
• Donate time, money, advice, or encouragement to any project
• Contribute ideas and support to a thriving community of individuals who are making a difference

First go to the Start A Project tab to learn more about the process. You will need to complete and submit a simple application to start a profile. Feel free to take your time with the application as you can always save your work, stop, and come back to complete it later.

Our application committee will review your submission and get back to you within 48 hours of your submission. If your project is approved, we will send you an email that confirms we've approved your project and you are free to visit and edit your profile page.  Simply go to your Account page to access your profile page.

You can put up essentially any kind of smart, scholastic, academically-oriented, research-based, or socially beneficial project! Be creative! 

Sample projects could include:

• A graduate research initiative in need of funding
• A school-sponsored mural
• Aid packages to victims of natural disasters
• Promotion of an academic, scientific, or artistic contest submission
• Purchasing new equipment for a music department
• Creating a meeting that brings together scholastic experts in a specific academic field
• Bringing solar panels to an "off-grid" utility area as part of a school project
• Filming a documentary that highlights poverty in your city
• Aiding the design of an energy efficient appliance
• Funding a club's trip for an academic or social-impact conference
• Conducting research for your graduate thesis
• Anything that helps the community!!!

We do not want to influence you too much. Be creative and apply for a project that will benefit your research or your community.

For more inspiration, visit LongTail Neighborhoods to see other positive-impact events around your community or LongTail World for a visual depiction of cool projects happening all across the world.

Not at all! The entire premise of LongTail Grants rests upon the belief that no project is too small or insignificant. If you believe you can raise money or awareness and support for your idea, then please feel free to apply for a LongTail Grants profile page. Generally, we believe the most successful projects are started by people who have specific domain expertise in their field or have thought through how they will complete the project.  

As you will be reaching out to your friends and family for fundraising - the key to a successfully funded project is convincing those in your social network, and other visitors to the site, that your idea is worth supporting.

Anyone can start a project, but not every project is appropriate for LongTail Grants. We want to support a trusted community of individuals who endeavor to bolster their scholastic contributions. LongTail Grants intends to showcase a collection of the best academic grants across the country. To create this community, the LongTail Grants Application Committee reviews project applications to assure nothing pornographic, offensive, or detrimental to the LongTail Grants mission comes onto the site. We do not intend to use the application process to rank or make value judgments regarding the benefit of each project. Rather, we want to filter out inappropriate content.  In most scenarios, we intend to provide written feedback to each applicant regarding his/her proposed project idea.

Absolutely! In most cases, we will provide written feedback regarding why we believe the project is inappropriate for the site, and perhaps recommend specific suggestions to make the project more suitable for LongTail Grants. When resubmitting an application, please let us know that you have previously applied.

Our Application Committee is comprised of busy volunteers who work multiple roles within the organization. We suggest 48-hours as a general timeframe in which you can expect to hear back regarding the status of your application. Please understand that our committee is very busy, especially when a large number of applications arrive in a short period of time. Please be patient, know that we are working quickly to review your application, and will get back with you as soon as we are able to. If it has been more than one week since you have applied, or if your project has a particular urgency, then contact info@longtailgrants.org to inquire about the status of your application. Please include your name and project title in the subject of the email.

This is a tricky question. In general, we want you to work on the specific project you submitted in the application. We do not want you to apply to raise money for your physics thesis, and then use your profile page to raise money for your ping pong team. We understand that details in your project may change from the time you submit your application. If these changes significantly alter the purpose of your original project idea, we will kindly ask you to delete your old profile page and resubmit an application for the new project. However, we understand that specific project details may change over time. As long as these changes do not significantly change the look and feel of your project, or deceive potential donors, you are free to make them from your profile dashboard.

In the application, any piece of information that is labeled "Public" will be made publicly viewable once your profile page goes live. Please take extra care to think about these specific application fields as you will not be able to change them once your profile goes live.

If you plan to raise money through LongTail Grants, it is necessary to submit a basic budget as part of your application. The budget is intended to list the minimum amounts of money you need to raise in order to implement and maintain your project. If you do not wish to raise money for your project, then put zero values in the budget fields. We want you to take your fundraising seriously. More specifically, we want to help assure your potential donors that you have thought through the plan and implementation of your project. Your donors may find your project non-credible if you claim to need $10,000 to purchase burritos for a group of homeless veterans. You are allowed to raise money in excess of your budget, but we want you to meet the minimum expenses necessary to at least get your project going. When reviewing your application, the LongTail Grants application committee will determine whether the numbers in your budget are somewhat reasonable, and will provide corresponding feedback. For more information, please visit the Raising Money section in the FAQ's.

In order to be eligible to sign up for a replica watches uk LongTail Grants profile page, users must be thirteen (13) years of age or older.

However, per the replica watches rules of our payment provider, only users who are eighteen (18) years of age or older are eligible to raise money through LongTail Grants.

Once your application is accepted by the LongTail Grants application committee, we will send you an email that includes a link to the dashboard of your profile page. In addition to this link, you will also be able to access your dashboard from any computer by LOGGING-IN to the site with your username and password. Your dashboard is your ‘behind-the-scenes command center’ that you will use to build, edit, and manage your profile page.

Use your dashboard to insert, delete, or alter most of the content on your profile page. After making changes, you will be prompted whether you will want to save the changes, which will make the edited content live on your profile page. 

The pieces of information that MUST be included on your profile page are the same pieces of information that we required in the application. Such fields include your name, project title, location, and budget (if raising money).

After that, it is up to you how much information you want to include. Include whatever information you believe will help you meet your fundraising/support goals.

We would prefer if you include a picture of yourself on your profile page as it helps a donor associate an actual face to the project. Additionally, we believe it will be more effective for you to raise money/awareness when you can demonstrate there is a personal backing to the project. Also feel free to post other pictures that are related to the project – please refer to our sample projects for examples of such pictures. Our system supports .jpg, .gif, and .bmp picture files. To upload a picture, access the photo section in your dashboard and click “Upload File.” A dialog box will appear where you can navigate to where your pictures are in your files. Click the one you want and hit OK. It’s that easy! LongTail Grants management reserves the right to block or delete any pictures that are inappropriate for the LongTail Grants community.

No one besides you and us, unless you give someone else access. LongTail Grants will not share your username or password with anyone. If there is more than one person working on a project, your team will still only be given one log-in username and password.

Just click on the "Deactivate my Account" link in your account settings. Please contact us at support@longtailgrants.org if you experience any issues during this process.

As part of the agreement to create a profile page on LongTail Grants, every grantee is required to provide regular status updates regarding the progress of your project. These updates do not need to be overly onerous or specific, but we require them for two primary reasons. 1) We want to assure that all projects on LongTail Grants are actively running. We do not want to include dead or halted projects on our site because we do not want potential donors to give money to a project that is inactive. 2) We want to help assure your donors that you are doing what you say you’re doing. Providing your donors with regular status updates will help assure them that they have wisely donated their money.

We do not require much and want to make it as easy as possible for you to update your status. Did you buy supplies? Did you put up any new flyers? Did you do any research? If so, then you have a great status update! Let the world know that you are making steps forward with your project. It will make your profile page more dynamic, and your donors will appreciate being constantly kept in the loop. We want to make this as easy as possible, so we allow you to update using your Facebook or Twitter accounts. All we need is 140-characters related to your project’s progress. A picture or embedded YouTube video of you working on your project counts as a legitimate update. We will automatically notify your donors with these updates. Only include information in your update that you don’t mind sharing with the world.

Please update often. We would prefer if you updated at least once every two weeks. If two months go by without an update, we may put a notice on your profile page indicating that your project may no longer be active and we may freeze your ability to raise money. If three months go by without an update, we may remove your profile page from the LongTail Grants site. Your username and password will remain active so you will have the ability to log-in and make your project active once again.

If you know you will be unable to provide status updates, please email us at support@longtailgrants.org and let us know. Additionally, we would appreciate if you update your status with the notice that you may be unable to provide regular updates. This will help your community understand that you are still actively working on your project, and correspondingly using their money and support wisely.

Your status update will be made available to the general public on your profile page. Additionally, your status update will be included in the rotation queue for recent updates on the LongTail Grants homepage. We will automatically email your updates to any of your donors who have indicated they want to be updated of your progress. Additionally, you may want to email your social network and let them know how your project has been going!

From your project profile dashboard you will be able to post messages and upload pictures/video of your progress. These updates can be made available to all of your donors, supporters, and will be displayed on your social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Our current payment replica watches provider, WePay, stipulates that all recipients of funds must be eighteen (18) years or older.  Therefore if you are between the ages of 13 replica cartier watches and 18 we will unfortunately not allow you to raise money with Longtail Grants.

We are currently replica watches using WePay (http://www.wepay.com) to process our payments. 

WePay enables safe, secure payment transfers via credit card.  To learn more replica omega watches about the company and how your money is handled, please visit their FAQ section:  https://www.wepay.com/about/faq

You will be able to receive your funds either through a newly issued debit card, by check, or via direct banking account transfer. 

After completing the application we will automatically establish a WePay account for you that will enable you to start raising money.  In order to receive the funds, you will need to confirm your account with WePay (we will send you a link with instructions). replica watches  After confirmation, you can indicate how you would like to accept the funds - via debit card, check, or account transfer.

Note:  If you choose to go with a debit replica breitling watches card, it will cost $10 (taken from the amount have raised) and take roughly 7-10 days to receive in the mail.

Unlike other fundraising sites, we give you full access to the funds you raise regardless whether you meet your budget. 

We would prefer that you do  replica omega watches your best to meet your budgeting goals  replica watches - particularly if the cost to complete your project depends upon meeting your budget.  It also makes our site look better to show more budgets have been met.

If you are able to raise more money than you had budgeted, we will allow you to do so.  We will indicate on your page that your proposed budget has been met, but still allow replica watches you to raise whatever money you desire.

We do this because some projects are ongoing and do not have a one-time budget.  Therefore, we do not want to cut off funding for excellent, continuous projects.  We replica cartier watches will still require you to post regular updates of your progress in order to be able to raise funds.

As we mentioned before, LongTail Grants reserves the right to delete any projects that we believe to be fraudulent, offensive, pornographic, or that any way deters from what was indicated in the original application.

However, LongTail Grants also replica breitling watches reserves the right to simply freeze your ability to raise funds.  We will not take away any of the money that you had already raised, but we will suspend your ability to raise more money. 

The following actions may result in LongTail Grants temporarily freezing your ability to raise money:

1. Not regularly updating your profile page with progress on your project.  If you do not update your page regularly with a status update, or new photo, or YouTube video, or other indication that you are working on your project - we may assume that you are not working on your project. replica watches If that is the case, we will freeze your fundraising abilities until you start updating again.
2. Any indications you are completely "wasting" the donor's funds.  We purposefully do not check how you are spending your money for your project.  That is your choice.  However, any indications that you are using the raised funds for superfluous or wasteful purposes is inconsistent with the LongTail Grants mission, and possibly insulting to the donors.  We will freeze your fundraising abilities and possibly remove you from the site.

WePay charges a 3.5% transfer fee (with the exception for donations under $15 which are replica watches uk charged $0.50) and LongTail Grants charges a 3% processing fee. 

So, most transactions will have a total 6.5% fee charged.  This cost is much less than nearly all other "replica watchescrowdfunding" sites that have much larger overhead costs. 

If you choose to receive your money on a newly issued debit card, WePay charges $10 - which can be directly taken from your raised funds.

 

No. At this time none of the donations sent through LongTail Grants will be tax deductible. Many of the grantees are not representatives of 501(c)(3) charitable organizations that qualify for tax deductible status. To prevent confusion or abuse, we want to make it clear that no donation to an individual through LongTail Grants is tax-deductible. Please refer to our Terms Of Service for more information. If you would like to give a tax-deductible donation to a nonprofit organization, please do so through their own fundraising mechanisms.

Absolutely.  Though we require donors to sign up for FREE with LongTail Grants, you do not need to sign up for a WePay account and can safely donate with your credit card online.

Feel free to send a message directly to the Project Organizer (through his/her profile page) to express your support and ask how you can get involved. As a registered user, also please visit the LongTail Grants Forum to see if anyone is seeking help for any of their own initiatives.

To prevent SPAM or abuse, we do not automatically list the personal contact information for any of our grantees. As a registered user, you can send a message to the Project Organizer through LongTail Grant’s internal messaging system. Make sure to include contact information so the project organizer knows how to get in touch with you. We do not guarantee that the project organizer will respond to all inquiries.

There are a number of ways you can support a project other than through monetary donations or volunteering. Many of our grantees are seeking advice, encouragement, networking, expertise, supplies, or anything else that could help their project locally or from afar. Please contact the grantee to offer your support or services.

As a registered user, you can interact in LongTail Grants’ forums section. In this section, check the threads regarding suggested projects. Please feel free to add your own suggestions! Additionally, feel free to contact project organizers who have done similar projects with your thoughts and ideas.

To email your social network about your project, feel free to use the template from our LongTail Messaging System. This messaging system essentially acts as an email server and can send out messages from LongTail Grants that are directly attributed to your profile page. The template will allow you to enter any and all information that’s pertinent to your project, can include pictures, and provides a direct link to your profile and donation page. Additionally, you can always send out a link to your profile page from your own email program (or Twitter or Facebook messaging system). We purposely made the links to the profile page easy to remember and copy/paste.

LongTail Grants offers a feature that populates a PDF file with your project information with a simple click of the button from your project profile dashboard. Look for the “Generate PDF Project Flyer” button. Feel free to save, print, and distribute wherever you want!

Feel free to distribute your custom LongTail Grants URL through email, Facebook, on blogs, in your CV, and anywhere else you want. Think of your profile page as a way to demonstrate your motivation, ingenuity, social commitment, and achievement. We commonly update the grantee dashboards with TIPS on how to best build awareness for projects. Check the LongTail Grants user forum in the dashboard as there may be threads from other users who may be able to offer networking advice.

LongTail Neighborhoods offers individuals who have completed or are working on current projects the ability to gain recognition and searchability on a centralized platform. This is a Google Mashup for local community projects – a place where you can search for what is happening in your neighborhood. There is no formal “application” process to submit a project to LongTail Neighborhoods (as there is in LongTail Grants). However, LongTail Grants management will review all submissions and will delete any inappropriate or offensive projects.

Submit a photo, address, short blurb, and (if available) a hyperlink to your Facebook page, Flickr account, Twitter, or any personal website that you wish to draw attention to and gain more publicity.

EXAMPLE: Paula was asked to paint a mural on the side of school in downtown Reno, NV. She is proud of her work and wants to draw more attention to the need for public arts projects, and also to her own personal gallery of work. One day, a parent of the school who enjoyed seeing the mural daily was interested in other pieces of work by the artist. She was able to search the mural and find information on Paula on LongTail Neighborhoods. The parent was able to click on Paula’s art gallery link and buy a few pieces of her work.

LongTail Neighborhoods intends to be the most complete and accurate collection of local projects, events, people, and businesses that contribute to the community. - If you are organizing a project and are looking for businesses who might contribute - If you are looking for like-minded individuals to help out on your own project - If you are looking for information on a project in your community that you find interesting - If you are interested in things that are benefiting your neighborhood

We want to give recognition and grassroots advertising to businesses that help and support local projects. Any business that donates to a project on LongTail Grants’ main project pages will automatically be listed as a community contributor on LongTail Grants and LongTail Neighborhoods. However, there are also many other businesses who have helped their communities outside of LongTail Grants. Many of these businesses provide vital support to their neighborhoods and we intend to give them recognition through LongTail Neighborhoods. Any business who has donated funds, time, supplies, equipment, expertise, space, labor, or support to a community beneficial effort can post their website and list of contributions through LongTail Neighborhoods.

You can donate to any project on behalf of a business or organization. All donations are appreciated; however, any donation over $25 to a project will allow a business to upload their logo (or photo), address, and a hyperlink to their company website. These pieces of information will be associated with the project and displayed on their profile page as a “sponsor.”

A well-connected project will automatically disseminate this information with their entire social network on LongTail Grants, Facebook, Twitter, and beyond. According to Facebook, the average user has 130 friends; the average Twitter user has 126 followers. By associating yourself directly with a LongTail Grantee, a business benefits in two major ways:

1) They are recognized as a community supporter involved in improving their neighborhood

2) There is a multiplicative effect of grassroots advertising through the social network of project organizers. Instead of just buying an internet advertisement that will appear on the side of a website, your business will become an integral part of the person’s social network, visible to all of their contacts. People may be more willing to support a business that directly supports their “friends” and local community projects, rather than just one that advertises through more traditional methods. Please see the LongTail Neighborhoods FAQ section for information on more ways that your business can benefit from our online community.