Encourage innovation for local problems in the college community. Gather, organize, and disseminate resources to allow the project to flourish. Identify key leaders in projects and cultivate them as future leaders of the fund.

With the Idea Fund, we were able to show our ability to take a complex want - providing students an arena to realize their burning entrepreneurialism - and create something meaningful and long lasting.

That impactful seed round provided by the Office of the President allowed the group to rally around these resources to finance student inspired concepts like The Peddler, a bike powered coffee cart that roves around campus selling brew kiosk style. Five years later, it’s still in operation, which speaks to the way this group has created a formidable ecosystem of services through student leadership and administrative advisement to manage, finance, market, and launch a constellation of projects that speak to this sustainably minded and entrepreneurial generation. To learn more about the Idea Fund, go to http://blogs.dickinson.edu/ideafund/