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Phase: Research Missions: Highlight Successes

CROWDFUNDING COLLEGE

Funding the future of your college with the help of others!

Photo of Patricio Toussaint
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What is a provocation or insight that might inspire others during this challenge?

A scientist who discovers a cure for HIV? A scientist who discovers a cure for Cancer? An entrepreneur that transforms a startup into a Global company? Young people nowadays may have the potential to reach those goals but may lack the education opportunity to do so. Crowdfunding is trending for funding new businesses or ideas a person may have. Companies such as Kickstarter, Crowdrise, and many others are very successful in this field. But I realized that there are also crowdfunding opportunities given to students in order to attend college. Nowadays Educational funding is very popular one site that offers it is called GoFundMe. Around 130,000 accounts have been created in the GoFundMe website, raising more than $20 million dollars in 2015 for educational purposes. Through a Crowdfunding site a young person could tell his/her story and could be given the opportunity to attend college and reach his/her dreams! Maybe one of those persons could be the next scientist who discovers the cure for cancer! Crowdfunding is a great Idea for students to share their story and get funded by others. I started to research and basically all of them are websites, what about the low-income students that don't have access to them? During the research I read in some articles that some people did not want to donate since it could be a scam, and I thought what if it was not a scam? I think this is a very innovative way to get funded in order to get a high education degree or at least lower your costs for obtaining an educational degree. This could be an inspiration in order to develop future ideas! How can a person who does not have access to Internet get funded from this websites? How can we engage the colleges to support crowdfunding? In what other ways can we take advantage from this Crowdfunding Websites? http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/crowdfunding-college-more-students-depend-kindness-strangers-n418831 www.collegestartup.org (MIKE IANNETTA)

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ProjectED - (Updated 1/27/16 - Corporate Sponsorship Document Added)
ProjectED - (Updated 1/27/16 - Corporate Sponsorship Document Added)

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Photo of Irene Kien

You have a great perspective, Patricio! I always hear about crowdfunding on different kind of projects and for other vocational work, but I definitely see the opportunity to use that idea toward paying off college. It is a way for individuals to give back to the community by helping out a student with their tuition. Also, if many students resort to crowdfunding for financial support, do you think some stories will sound repetitive? If so, do you think people will not be able to fund some students because no particular story stood out to them? Thank you so much for sharing this contribution because it does relate to my inspiration of Paying it Forward! I look forward to hearing more about crowdfunding college costs!

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Photo of Shane Zhao

Glad you dropped by to check out Patricio's post Irene! Patricio, here's a link to Irene post on Pay it Forward! https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/higher-ed/research/the-idea-of-paying-it-forward

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