Through generous gifts from Carly Fiorina and Kevin Plank, the Dingman Center provides ad-hoc seed funding for University of Maryland startups, called the E-Fund. These nondilutive grants range from $250-$1000. Funding typically goes towards equipment purchases, website hosting, rapid prototyping, incorporation fees or any other costs that you see a barrier to getting an idea to market.
Check out this semester’s E-Fund recipients!
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Edullo
Founders: Eric Patel ’21 and Esha Vangara
Edullo is a platform created by students for students. They connect scholars to freelancers to do their part of level the playing field in education. Their $500 E-Fund will go towards supporting and maintaining their data-heavy website platform.
WISE Cities, LLC
Founder: Marie Brodsky
WISE Cities recently won a pilot project with the City of Fairfax following a smart city challenge competition, proposing WISE Cities: Where Innovating Supports the Elderly. Stemming from what they saw facing their own grandparents: a major problem that continues to worsen is the isolation and inactivity experienced by seniors, especially in lower income communities, associated with depression as well as neurodegenerative conditions and long-term health problems. They are working towards two goals: in the shorter term, a geographically-based senior social network app, and in the longer term, the construction of WISE spaces (senior areas for exercise and interaction) in several DMV locations. Their $640 E-Fund will be applied to developing the app. *Update: an additional $360 E-Fund will be applied to further development and user interface design to improve the app’s ease of accessibility.
GoodNewsUniversity
Founder: Oluwafunsho Adeyale, ’21
A new clothing collection, GoodNewsUniversity is coming into the world with some bold fresh trends. Their $500 E-Fund will be used for airbrushing their next line.
Camp Segal, LLC
Founders: Max Segal ’21 and Jacob Nelson ’21
Camp Segal provides the support and infrastructure for college-aged individuals to open up small summer camps. They look to establish a series of camp locations in a time where parents look for camps to focus on safety, proximity, and flexibility. Their $1000 E-Fund will be applied to website development and to expand marketing outreach in New Jersey and New York.