BERKELEY Inspire

Space Technologies and Rocketry (STAR)

Over the last eight years, STAR has successfully completed 13 launches. Berkeley’s premier competition rocketry team has been participating in Berkeley Crowdfunding, and now acquires more than half of its yearly funding from the program, with the rest being raised directly from the university and some corporate partners. “Without crowdfunding, nothing we do would be possible. Our yearly budget is roughly $30–35k,” says Aidan Rickert ’27, the club’s external vice president, ”and nearly all of that goes towards materials equipment.”

“Our yearly month of crowdfunding is stressful,” says Rickert, “but also some of the most fun we have as a club, from making silly music videos as rewards for hitting milestones to celebrating hitting our goal on Halloween.”

Southeast Asian Student Coalition (SASC)
New to the crowdfunding program in 2024, SASC surpassed its inaugural goal by 902 percent! “Though we didn’t have any experience with the Crowdfunding software or the tools and strategies, we were ultimately able to collaborate on a mission and a design that would best fit our projects,” says club Operations Director Jordan Vu ’27. The funds raised have gone toward events that feed more than 150 students on average and graduation gear for low-income students. If they were to do it again, says Vu, “We would probably push out and ping more of our audience for support.”

With nearly 1,000 percent raised, there’s nowhere to go but up!

Cal Ice Hockey
Also overperforming in 2024 was the ice hockey team, who raised nearly three times what they set out to and are ranked number one in the PAC 8 and number seven in the Western region as of this writing. “With western regionals being held in Colorado and nationals being held in Missouri,” one of the players told us, “these funds will assist our team with any extra post-season travel.”

“The funds will greatly assist our team as we make our playoff push.”