Universities could convert music, movie downloads into fundraising cash


Student downloads could raise money for colleges.

College students’ love of music, movies, video games, and books could be a supplement to college and university fundraising as campus decision makers prove more willing to experiment with technological ways to ask donors for cash.

A new website called Huzo is inviting colleges to join its entertainment service, and the site’s founder, Terrell Samuels, said that if enough students sign up and buy songs, games, and eBooks, institutions could bring in tens of thousands of dollars.

Huzo users earn back 2 percent of every purchase they make on the site, meaning they’d receive two cents when they purchase a $1 song. If a college or university persuaded its students, faculty, and alums to join Huzo, and each member spent $7 a month on the site, the campus would reap about $30,000 annually, Samuels said.

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Students could also make a few dollars with consistent downloads from Huzo’s library of songs, movies, and eBooks.

While Huzo is still invitation-only, the site has a few high-profile higher education users such as the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, and the University of California.

Samuels said Huzo was a natural fit in higher education because of schools’ enormous social media followings.

“A lot of colleges have hundreds of thousands of [Facebook and Twitter] followers, but they can’t figure out how to monetize this,” said Samuels, who has developed Huzo for three years. “People don’t know that you can make a significant amount of money” by leveraging faithful social media followers.

Samuels said he created Huzo when, during the worst days of the economic downturn, spending on entertainment actually rose by about $20 billion a year.

Adding a “philanthropic component” to that massive consumer spending, he said, was the idea behind Huzo. Samuels is targeting celebrities, athletes, organizations, and universities with large, engaged groups of social media users likely to create a Huzo account and spend a few bucks every month.

“If I could find a way to re-circulate some of that money back to consumers since people are losing their jobs and having a tough time, I thought that would be a great thing,” Samuels said. “People like the idea of giving a little bit back. They want to do that.”

Earning from Huzo purchases won’t rival the multimillion-dollar fundraising campaigns commonplace on college campuses. Colleges are also less desperate for donors’ checks than they were three years ago when the economic downturn led to a precipitous decline in fundraising.

The latest annual college fundraising figures show donations to colleges and universities rose 8.2 percent in fiscal 2011, crossing back over the $30 billion mark for just the second time ever, and improving many schools’ financial footing after several lean years due to the recession that started in 2008.

Alumni giving rose 9.9 percent nationally, and accounted for about 26 percent of the donations colleges receive. Corporate donations rose 6.6 percent. Donations from foundations, which remain the largest source of support at about 29 percent, rose 3.3 percent.

The much-anticipated uptick in campus donations, higher-education fundraising experts said, has coincided with massive campaigns on Twitter and Facebook designed to draw donations not just from alums, but also from people who have never stepped foot on campus.

Samuels said it’s that willingness to experiment with unorthodox fundraising efforts that makes Huzo a potentially popular tool on campuses.

Dan Germain, director of Florida-based Talisma North America, said campus fundraising decision makers have adopted more social media use as alums have become more adept at tweeting and sharing items on Facebook.

“I think social media is always important as the constituency of supporters grows younger and younger over time,” he said. “It’s pretty clear that online fundraising is playing a big role right now.”

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