As students’ budgets grow tighter than ever, some are resorting to an unusual means to support their college educations: begging for tuition help from strangers online.
A Web site called SponsorMyDegree.com has drawn about 10,000 users since its creation in 2008 by a Colorado couple, Henner and Lilac Mohr. Students can sign up free and create a profile with information about themselves: photos, their hobbies, their career aspirations, the reasons underlying their pleas for help.
Among the students who have put out their virtual signs are single parents who have returned to college, recent graduates struggling to pay off student loans, and future do-gooders making the pitch that they are a worthwhile investment.
“By assisting me, you are assisting many,” promises the profile of one aspiring nurse.
Mr. Mohr and his wife do not advertise their site or invest in marketing, so potential donors find out about SponsorMyDegree.com by word of mouth. Typical donations start at about $20, but not every student receives a donation, said Mr. Mohr, in an interview.
When asked how much money has been donated through the site so far, Mr. Mohr declined to answer. The largest donation so far was $150, he said.
Mr. Mohr said he recognized the service’s limitations. The site’s sponsorships might give students some extra cash, like money to buy books, he said. “It’s not going to pay for your whole education.”
And most students using the site don’t make any bones about their expectations—in their profiles, they express gratitude for any help they receive.
Two years after creating the site to help themselves pay for graduate school, the Mohrs say they haven’t made any money from the online service. They haven’t even had any success with their own profiles.
“Nobody has sponsored us yet,” Mr. Mohr said.
3 Responses to Students Beg for Tuition Money Online
joefishr - June 22, 2010 at 7:37 pm
Interesting idea about online begging. We talked about this site on episode 15 of the Higher Ed Review. Bottom line is don’t put all your eggs in that online basket when it comes to funding. http://higheredreview.com/episode-15-woodens-wisdom/
srpowers2004 - June 23, 2010 at 2:35 pm
A very successful and quickly-growing online service is ScholarMatch.org, which launched only a few months ago as a beta program created by 826 Valencia, a San Francisco-based writing workshop non-profit in various major cities supported by writers and media luminaries such as Dave Eggers, Sherman Alexie, Ira Glass and Sarah Vowell. It only funds undergrads as far as I can tell, but it’s growing like wildfire in the non-profit college-preparation sphere that I work with in the Bay Area. In fact, some of the sister organizations of the scholarship fund I work for have folded the ScholarMatch site into their own scholarship and fundraising efforts for their students.Most of these students are just looking for “gap” funding that will keep them and/or their parents from having to take out so many Federal and PLUS loans.I can see the potential for problems with models like this, but in the case of ScholarMatch, there are some pretty stringent renewal policies, and all the students I’ve seen on the site have gone through other organizations like mine to find the service and submit their profiles. Everyone is working together with 826 Valencia, and there are plans to expand. I hope it continues to work out for so many deserving students, but that it also weeds out fraudulent pleas for funds.
arrive2__net - June 25, 2010 at 12:12 am
I want to say good luck to the students seeking help, no doubt many of them are deserving. I wonder though if they might benefit more from some kind of site that might help them make some extra money on line by selling, creating, or some other endeavor, maybe just enough extra cash to help them through school. In effect these sites help students to seek spontaneous scholarships … maybe there would be a way of arranging some kind of corporate or church sponsorship for some of them. I wonder if Army recruiters or part-time employers scan these sites for prospects. Good luck students! Bernard SchusterArrive2.net