About academist

What is crowdfunding?

Crowdfunding is a method of gathering funds from a large number of supporters via the Internet to realize the challenger’s ideas.

Supporter pay money to challengers on the crowdfunding platform as follows.
1. Those who have an idea that they want to realize (= challenger) call for support.
2. People who want to support the challenger (= supporter) provide money.
3. The supporter receives gift from the challenger.

What is academist?

Academist is the first crowdfunding platform specialized in acquiring research funds in Japan. In recent years, the grant of operation expenses to national universities has been reduced, and the proportion of competitive funding is increasing. Therefore, it is difficult for researchers to obtain funds with a challenging idea.

Therefore, we launched a crowdfunding platform that allows researchers to spread research ideas and receive financial support from people who sympathize with their appeal. We hope that the research idea and the appeal of researchers are spread nationwide through the Internet and that many people think that "this research field is interesting!". We would like to contribute to the future academic situation by managing our service.

Rules of academist

1. Reward-based crowdfunding
Academist is a "Reward-based" crowdfunding site. Supporters do not donate to researchers but purchase the gifts presented by researchers.
2. All or Nothing type
Academist adopts a mechanism of All-or-Nothing type. If the target amount set by the challenger is reached within the period, the project will be successful and the fund can be used as the research expenses, but if it does not reach it, the project will fail and the funds will not be moved at all.
3. 20% fee
There is no fee for publishing the project. In the case of project success, up to 80% of the gathered amount can be used as research expenses by the challenger. However, when setting items such as T-shirts to , material costs and shipping fees will be incurred separately. 17% of the total will be the fee of our company and 3% will be the commission of the settlement agent.

All or Nothing type and All In type

For almost all projects posted on the crowdfunding platform, the amount (target amount) necessary for realizing the idea is posted. In existing cloud funding, "All or Nothing type" which can receive money only when the target price is reached, "All In type" which can be accepted even if it does not reach is handled.

All or Nothing type (AON type)

For All or Nothing type, you can receive money only if you reach the target price. There are disadvantages that we can not receive the support money, but supporters may advertise the project because we need to make the project succeed in order to receive the return.

All In type

For All In type, you can receive funds even if you do not reach the target amount. Although there is an advantage that you can receive the support money surely, since the motivation to achieve the target amount decreases with both the challenger and the supporter, the total achievement tends to become lower as compared with the AON type.