The Slushy Fund

The Slushy Fund supports prototyping for George Mason University¹ students, with no expectation of repayment.

The application takes less than a minute, and each reimbursement should take less than a minute to file.

The fund is intended to operate at the speed of prototyping, not paperwork.

Logistics

Application (once)

Via LinkedIn DM to Dhruv explain:

• What are you building?
• Why are you building it?
• Send a picture of your progress so far (even if its just a napkin sketch)

Just add me on LinkedIn and DM me your responses. You can also reach out via Discord - I'm in the University Scholars server and the MIX server.

If I have more questions, I'll follow up. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds to apply.

I'm setting aside a total of $2,000 for all applicants combined, for the 2025-2026 academic year. Not much, but we'll see how far we can stretch it!

Send Reciepts (for every reimbursement)

Every purchase must be backed by a reciept you send me over LinkedIn, which I will then reimburse.

You can apply for particular purchase in advance. This way we can set aside the money + let you know that you expense is good.

You can also do cowboy reimbursements (where you buy the thing and then submit the reciept instead of asking in advance), but there's a risk I'll say no, run out of money to allocate, or improve the rules.

Usual disclaimer that I reserve the right to say to no for any reason or no reason at all.

Rules

No academic projects (classwork or funded research)

Things you're "required" to build (for class, for work, or for your thesis) can be cool, but that's not what this fund is for.
There are tons of grants and funds already in place for this.

This money is intended to fund passion projects.

You still own everything

You own your intellectual property, and you own the stuff you bought (even after I reimburse it).

However, you grant me a license to share the photos of your work & undetailed descriptions of your project. This is so I can build a case for this sort of "ad-hoc" funding

Q&A

What are some examples of things I can use this for?

• Printer filament, and other supplies
• Items used and consumed in the development of your project (microcontrollers, sensors, fasteners, modules etc.)

Please use this money in good-faith towards actually achieving your project. This fund has few rules - let's try to keep it that way!

Why?

In the grand scheme of alumni contributions, my $2,000 is a rounding error.

There are many good reasons to contribute straight to the university. There is no mechanism I'm aware of that directly disperses funds to students in a way that keeps up with the speed of prototyping.

This fund probably won't last all year.

I'm not sure I'm going to do this again next year, let's see how this one goes!

What about the Student Funding Board (SFB)? Aren't they unable to spend all their money?

GMU's existing Student Fund is "underallocated", but still denies most legitimate prototyping-related requests, largely due to tracability & inventory of all purchased items.

Their contrived process requires RSO's to fill out multi-page rubrics, take mandatory online trainings, review 50-slide presentations, and wait several weeks only to recieve a denial.

Whether by cynical state regulation or by internal bureaucracy/politics, the SFB is unable to effectively fund hardware STEM projects that RSOs come together to build.

I want to bring a culture of saying "yes" to non-academic STEM project funding in the MIX.

It should't take weeks to request a $50 reimbursement and signatures from the entire GMU finance deparment for a legimiate request for microcontrollers to be denied.

De-minimis purchases of parts used-and-consumed by a project should not require on-campus inventory presence.

Why reimbursements?

If I give out a block grant, I can't reallocate that money to another project (if, for example, the recipient(s) loses interest in their project and no longer needs parts)

Whose money is this?

My name is Dhruv
I was in the class of 2024, where I got a major in computer science and jetissoned my second math major to get into industry. I was proud

I was a teaching assistant (TA) for CS department. After almost unionizing the TA's because our $10/hr stipend was left unpaid nearly for over 3 months, I left this job with some of my friends to start https://passcs.io. I was able to achieve several financial goals through this buisness, until I handed over the company to another tutor

This experience created my despise for the back-office bean-counters that do not meaningfully improve the student or faculty experience. Hot take: if the bean-counters can't effectively discharge the University's legal obligations, how can we expect them to effectively administer innovation & academic funding?

While I was a resident advisor, I got to watch the de-facto organizer of my floor rally his neighbors to build various applied engineering projects, including a fixed-wing UAS.

The following semester, after I moved to San Francisco for tech work, I had the privilege of seeing those same residents at Open Sauce, where they presented their work.

I have several other stories of projects those students built in the dorms, in spite of hurdles created by University Life regulation and a finite budget. These are the kinds of projects I want to enable, and that bring glory to our alma-mater in the eyes of modern industry.

1. Slushy Fund is run by an aulmn, and is not affiliated with George Mason University. ↩