Crowdfunding to pay for college

Southfield, Mi., native Emettra Nelson, one of 10 winners of a $10,000 GoFundMe Scholarship, was such a driven high school student that she earned a spot at Michigan State University on full scholarship.

“I was determined not to let anything get in the way of my degree,” she says. But a positive pregnancy test at 19 left her asking, “What am I going to do?”

Knowing that taking a break would mean forfeiting financial aid, Nelson finished the term, worked for a construction company over the summer as planned, and started her junior year nine months pregnant.

After her daughter’s birth, Nelson managed to make it work with child care, first from her mother and sister, and then by a day-care center paid for with a grant, financial aid and “always working somewhere.” She was set to begin her final year when she got word that her aid would not be renewed. Her account carried a disqualifying balance, despite Nelson having worked for months to pay down the spring break studyabroad program required for her major.

“My advisers were really saddened, because a lot of times when stuff like this happens people just drop out and you don’t hear from them again,” Nelson says. She looked for private scholarships and grants, but deadlines had passed. She sought a loan from a bank, but like most college students, she hadn’t yet developed sufficient credit. So she turned to GoFundMe.

It’s a position familiar to many.

“More than half of all Americans, if they have to come up with $400 unexpectedly, they can’t,” says GoFundMe chief executive Rob Solomon. “A car repair can be the difference between finishing college and dropping out.”

The situation is even more dire for the 4.8 million college students — 71 percent of them women, 54 percent single — who are raising dependent children, according to a 2014 report from the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Only 33 percent of students with children complete a certificate or degree within six years of enrollment, according to the report, in part because of all the time they must spend providing child care (often over 30 hours a week). Moreover, most “have no money to contribute to college expenses … Among single students with children, 88 percent have incomes at or below 200 percent of poverty.”

Solomon says when the crowdfunding startup first launched, most of the campaigns focused on natural disasters and medical expenses. Then users expanded the platform to education fundraising: everything from teachers requesting supplies to class trips. When the company started to see college students getting support for tuition and incidentals such as books — $60 million from over 850,000 donations for college-related expenses in the last three years alone, GoFundMe says — it looked for ways to encourage the phenomenon. It started with the scholarship contest last fall.

There are still hurdles for students. Crowdfunding is more difficult when one’s crowd doesn’t have extra funds. Going viral is more the exception than the rule.

But Solomon says the company is investigating ways to address one impediment to stranger contributions: the fact that “only donations made to a legally registered non-profit or charity may be considered eligible for donors to claim as a tax deduction,” as the website puts it.

As for Nelson, the scholarship she won from GoFundMe allowed her to continue her studies. She’s on track to graduate in May.