

Codefund – Crowdfunding for Aspiring Coders - dalibrandi
https://www.codefund.io/

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jtheory
I find I'm uncomfortable with many of the new ways crowdfunding is being
applied; this isn't the worst, but it's not great either.

Crowd-funding works psychologically pretty cleanly for funding new product
development, or artistic work. If it's a thing you want to exist and you think
the would-be creator can do it, you fund it, the creator's idea is validated,
the thing is (hopefully) made, and you get to enjoy it.

If you don't fund it, it sort of says "I don't feel a strong need for _you_
(creator) to built _that_ (thing) -- but doesn't pass a strong judgement on
the creator, even if you know them.

With "crowd-fund your medical expenses", for example, I'm much less
comfortable. Reading a plea, then choosing not to fund someone's treatment for
a serious illness feels like saying "I don't care if you die", when that's not
at all what I'm feeling.

I'm also uncomfortably, acutely aware of what people who post a crowd-funding
effort to _save my life_ or _save my home_ etc. must feel like when the effort
fails -- like the world at large, but even worse, the people who know and
seemingly care for them, don't care enough to save them.

These projects have noble goals -- people need help with medical expenses;
help them reach out to others for help! -- but it forces people to put a price
on things we'd rather not, but with weird twists ("I really want to help you,
but I'm pretty sure this alternative treatment you're trying to pay for is
snake oil...").

Codefund isn't as bad, on this spectrum, but it still feels a bit dark to me.
Negative feelings a campaign can invoke:

\- you start a campaign, convinced your super-supportive friends and family
will carry the day. It fails. Does this mean they don't care as much as you
thought? Or that they don't think you can succeed?

\- You are 6 months out of university, and stressing over how fast your salary
disappears, halfway through each month. A not-yet-close friend who you have
been trying to impress sends you a link: they're crowdfunding hacker school!
How much do you have to contribute (with a credit card, gritting your teeth),
to avoid alienating them?

If you think of crowdfund efforts as direct conversations (rather than
"interactions enabled by the internet"), it becomes more obvious which ones
are really uncomfortable. The level of discomfort is partly cultural -- maybe
there are subsets of Americans who feel it's basically "okay" to ask for
something you maybe shouldn't, and be told "no" (and be okay with that), but
for many, many people this is not okay, people will feel obliged to say "yes"
but resent you horribly, and so on.

A crowdfunding platform that basically enables painfully-uncomfortable
conversations at internet scale isn't an unalloyed good -- I think there must
be better solutions to these problems out there.

Sorry for the ramble; I'm not totally clear on where I stand, but curious to
hear what other people think about it.

[Edit: minor tweaks to what I was saying about Americans vs. the world...
didn't seem accurate.]

~~~
dalibrandi
If I'm understanding your argument correctly, you believe that certain
crowdfunding sites should make their fundraisers aware of the potentially
harmful psychological effects of a failed campaign, both on the side of the
fundraiser as well as the donor.

So yes, I agree that there are potentially negative effects that could result
from a failed campaign. People put a lot of effort into raising the funds
necessary to pursue their dreams. A failed campaign can be devastating to
someone who is emotionally invested in their future plans.

However, I don't believe that should stop entrepreneurs from trying to solve
the problem, especially in this case. Codefund exists because no one else has
presented a better solution, and I believe that the existence of an imperfect
solution is a greater good than the lack there of, despite potentially
negative psychological effects.

As a company, we can do a better job coaching fundraisers about the reality of
their situation, in an effort to regulate their expectations. We can and we
should do that much at least. That being said, I don't think closing the doors
on educational crowdfunding is the answer. I don't know what the ideal
solution is, but Adrian and I are committed to iterating toward that vision
based on your feedback.

~~~
shkkmo
I think your goal of crowdsourcing funding for the education of aspiring
developers is great. But I think you are using the wrong model.

I think asking aspiring coders to run a "kickstarter" style crowd funding
campaign for themselves is a mistake for the reasons the jtheory mentions.

I think it would make more sense to allow funders to organize themselves into
scholarship groups with shared goals.

Then match aspiring coders to these scholarship groups using a process similar
to the "National Resident Matching Program".

Then there is no binary choice of "you are deserving, you are not" about
aspiring coders being made by funders. It's more of a "this coder exemplifies
our ideals better than this coder"

/edited for clarity

~~~
dalibrandi
this is really interesting. regardless of how our first campaign goes, we're
going to seriously examine this as a possible iteration/pivot of our service.
We've encountered a lot of people that like the idea of getting more people to
learn programming, but a decent amount of hesitation to the current model.

big fan of moving away from anything that buckets individuals into "you are
deserving, you are not." creating a group around a specific coding goal
provides a nice layer of abstraction away from the individual.

~~~
shkkmo
One of the potential advantages with organizing funders into groups is that it
can allow you to tie the aspiring coders into an expanded support network of
funders and past funded aspiring coders.

Another potential advantage of a model like this is that aspiring coders who
"fail" to find the funding level they were looking for can be put in contact
with groups than can help them refine their appplication, skill set, and goals
so that they may be able to succeed in finding funding in the future.

This sort of funding paradigm could also be used to support quality educators
who want to volunteer to go into schools, non-profits and other areas that are
lacking skilled CS educators.

I think this sort of model could also be used "on top of" the more traditional
"kickstarter" crowdfunding model. You could still allow traditional, one
person to one person funding model, but at the completion of the campaign,
match funding groups with individuals who have not raised sufficient funds.

~~~
dalibrandi
Totally, it encourages networking of like minded individuals as well, which
could turn out to be a long lasting support system if the community is
continually fostered. Really like the early ideas floating around this model,
seems like there is good potential here.

------
dalibrandi
Hi Hacker News,

I want to introduce Codefund, a crowdfunding platform for aspiring coders. We
have built a platform that enables users to crowdfund their tuition after
being accepted into a programming bootcamp.

Our first campaign is now live, and we're fundraising for Rose Afriyie, who
has been accepted into the Starter League
([http://www.starterleague.com/](http://www.starterleague.com/)) in Chicago.
She's hoping to learn web development in order to continue building mRelief, a
social services app she is developing in partnership with the City of Chicago.

Check out her campaign here:
[https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose](https://www.codefund.io/campaign/rose)

twitter: @codefunding

\----------------------------------------------------------------------

Codefund is the bootstrapped project of Adrian Moses and Dana Alibrandi.
Adrian is a software engineer with a keen mind for good products, and I'm a
product manager filling in the gaps. We're aware that there are holes in our
product, but we feel like this platform is something that should exist in the
world. Maybe its current iteration isn't the ideal, but if you agree that we
should find a way to help diversify and bolster the tech industry, then we'd
love to hear your feedback on how to improve.

And most importantly, donate if you believe in the campaign and want to see
Codefund grow :)

~~~
johnny_utah
On [https://www.codefund.io/discover](https://www.codefund.io/discover), why
are you logging an object that contains all the information on the page?

Open the chrome console to reproduce.

Cool idea though! How do your terms compare to something like gofundme?

~~~
dalibrandi
Thanks for pointing that out, we're working on fixing it.

As compared to gofundme, our terms are similar in that there are no penalties
for missed deadlines and the fundraiser gets to keep any amount they raise. It
didn't seem right to reject donations just because the goal wasn't met. If a
fundraiser can raise any amount, then it makes their future debt much more
manageable.

We've been tossing around the idea of removing the deadline, but because of
the gap of time between acceptance and your first tuition payment, we inserted
a deadline to focus donations in our limited timeframe. In the future, we can
encourage applicants to create campaigns as quickly as possible, in order to
maximize the amount of time before the first tuition payment. In theory,
fundraisers can continue their campaigns until their full tuition is covered,
where a portion of the total is sent directly to the school in order to cover
that particular payment period. At the very least, it will buy fundraisers
more time to cover the total cost of their needs.

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tonysuper
As a young (18 in a month) programmer myself, I enjoy this idea. I'm not
certain about distributing aid in this manner, however. A lot of kids who
would deserve this might not necessarily be the best at presentation or
marketing.

Still, it is nice to see people taking an interest in young coders. There's a
lot of support for teaching kids programming, but I sometimes I feel like
those supporters don't know what to do once we actually learn.

~~~
dalibrandi
First off, congrats and good luck on the journey.

I also have some misgivings about this particular form of aid distribution.
It's very possible that some extremely deserving candidates miss out on aid
because they aren't the best at marketing. In that regard, we offer some basic
marketing suggestions and efforts around their campaign, and it's something we
hope to improve upon in the future.

I don't necessarily think Codefund is THE solution, but I think that it's A
solution, and it's one that we can keep iterating on together.

------
josephschmoe
The problem with crowdfunding education is that most people with wealthy
connections can already afford college.

~~~
dalibrandi
Very true, especially if the donations are mostly coming from friends and
family. Codefund will require users to demonstrate need, in order for us to
fulfill our mission of providing aid to those individuals who truly need it.
If we're going to bolster and diversify the tech industry, then we need to
address the problem of bootcamp tuition funding, which currently, is very
expensive for the average individual with no programming experience looking to
make a dramatic career change.

------
sbilstein
I like this idea but it turns financial aid into a contest. Why not distribute
pooled funds after aspiring programmers apply using a FAFSA or something
similar?

~~~
dalibrandi
FAFSA isn't an option for bootcamp applicants. Most (if not all) of these
schools aren't accredited, therefore, the options for financial aid are
extremely limited. We're played around with the idea of targeting larger scale
donors who would donate amounts that we could spread evenly across all
applicants.

Definitely agree with you though, there is a gamey element to it that I would
like to do away with. However, I will gladly entertain that solution for now
considering that the potential social benefit far outweighs the cons of it
being a contest.

~~~
sbilstein
I guess my thinking is, rather than collect small donations for
individuals...use their individual stories to collect funds for the pool. I
don't think any of these schools are accredited given their is no
accreditation for software engineer out there.

~~~
dalibrandi
I like this a lot too; it's similar to an idea we tossed around at one point,
where Codefund becomes a non-profit scholarship fund and we recruit donors at
a higher level, i.e. larger average donations. Still in the cards, so we'll
see after Adrian and I get a chance to go through and discuss all of this
awesome feedback.

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RadioactiveMan
When I first visited [http://codefund.io](http://codefund.io), I received
nginx's default page. After visiting
[https://codefund.io](https://codefund.io), subsequent attempts to reach
[http://codefund.io](http://codefund.io) do redirect to https.

~~~
dalibrandi
I noticed that as well, strange issue. We'll look into it.

