"Crowdfunding" is a route to serious funding for early stage ideas, and has grown dramatically in the past few years via foundational efforts from websites like Kickstarter. Crowdfunding is administered from a web page that allows people to make small ($5-$500) dollar funding commitments (usually in exchange for a token of recognition or an early version of a product) to individual innovators, many of whom have raised significant sums of money on these platforms. At Penn State University, we have created a pre-crowdfunding program called The Sparkplug@PSU that helps students mount a credible crowdfunding drive. Students apply for a $500 Sparkplug grant and can use these funds toward creating a web presence, shooting a quality video, or refinement of a prototype. The Sparkplug@PSU has funded several student groups so far and the educational value of their efforts, results and lessons learned will be discussed.