Crowd Funding for Scholarships - FundScholars.org Nathan Cahill 4054 Views http://www.fundscholars.org This idea was a winner! Nathan Cahill was awarded $5,000 in February 2012 Copy Link



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Fund Scholars is a platform to help students raise money for scholarships.

Students create a scholarship profile on FundScholars.org describing their unique background, their goals for the future, and how much money they need to raise for college. Then family, friends and acquaintances donate money towards that goal. Once they reach it, the scholarship is disbursed to their college against their tuition, tied to a GPA that the student promises to maintain to keep the scholarship.

Because no one has crowd funded student scholarships before, we are excited to be there first in this space. By reversing the scholarship process and lowering the barrier of entry, we are poised to start an amazing grassroots movement against student debt.

Our beta testing area is Western Michigan, with colleges in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. Our biggest struggle is getting the word out about Fund Scholars to students and donors alike. We need to start a local campaign to get students and donors involved.

Impact

Fund Scholar’s goal is to disrupt student debt.

Student debt is getting out of control. The average student debt is well over $25,000 after 4 years of college. Add a bleak jobs economy on top of that, and students are looking at paying off student loans for many years. Fund Scholars gives students an alternative way to pay for their education, through a grassroots, crowd funded model. Fund Scholars also offers transparency and accountability: students must maintain enrollment and a certain GPA.

What I Will Do With $5,000

We will launch a campaign aimed at students in Grand Rapids and the people that will fund their scholarships.

This fall, thousands of students in the Grand Rapids area will start college. We want to get these students to create a profile on FundScholars.org.

We’ll:

Plaster the area colleges and high schools with posters and flyers

Speak at local colleges

Hire students to hand out flyers and spread the word about Fund Scholars

Get on the local news and radio

Idea Links