The Nicholls community raised the funds necessary to fix the Nicholls Fountain with renovations to begin immediately.

As of last week, Nicholls received over $25,000 to repair and maintain the Nicholls Fountain from the community, alumni and student organizations.

According to Neal Weaver, vice president for University Advancement and director of the Nicholls Foundation, this is the first time that Nicholls has used crowd funding in order to receive funds from donors in the community.

Crowd funding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people typically via the Internet.

The crowd funding software that Nicholls used in order to raise the money necessary to maintenance the foundation is fundly.com.

“Websites such as Fundly are great opportunities for future projects of the University because of the overwhelming response from the community,” Weaver said.

According to Weaver, the repair of the fountain came up in a meeting with faculty. Because of a tight budget, the funding would have to come from elsewhere.

The fountain stopped working last semester because of old age. “The fountain is over 50 years old and it needed to be updated,” Weaver said.

During this meeting, some faculty members voted to do away with the fountain altogether, but the majority of others was very passionate about the fountain and felt as though it were a Nicholls icon that should be preserved forever.

“That’s when I knew that we had to reach out to the community for help in funds to not only repair the fountain, but to have it endowed to ensure that the fountain keeps flowing for many generations to come,” Weaver said.

There are currently no other upcoming projects to be funded from crowd funding, however, there could be some in the future.

“This run through of crowd funding just goes to show how much this community believes in us as a university, and I hope that they keep believing in us when it comes to backing us for future projects,” Weaver said.

Weaver thanks the marketing department for creating the videos and updating social media.
“They did an amazing job getting the word out there and helping the University reach it’s goal,” Weaver said.

Weaver said, “The donors, whether they donated $5 or thousands of dollars, your contribution means everything, and I hope that you continue to support us in all future endeavors.”

According to Weaver, the repairs to the fountain will begin as soon as the bad weather subsides.