The School Fund

The School Fund is a person-to-person crowdfunding platform and nonprofit organization through which donors directly contribute to educational scholarships for low-income students in countries that do not offer free, public secondary school.[1] Like other civic crowdfunding platforms,[2] through The School Fund, large numbers of online visitors support philanthropic efforts by pooling small contributions. The School Fund crowdfunds for students who have been identified by their teachers or local school officials as not having enough money to continue paying to go to school.[3]

Globally, 115 million children do not attend school,[4] and school fees contribute to this dropout rate by making education cost-prohibitive for impoverished students in developing countries.[5] School fees often disproportionately affect girls, with many impoverished families dedicating their limited money to educating their sons rather than their daughters.[6]

Methods

The School Fund employs a donation-based crowdfunding model to fund annual student needs, which start at around $150 per year.[7] Donors give online, but some conduct their own small fundraisers offline for individual students before contributing.[8]

Donors receive school receipts showing 100 percent of their donation has been applied to the educational costs of the specific student they opted to fund.[9]

The majority of The School Fund's students reside in sub-Saharan Africa, where education has been tied to poverty reduction and has been linked to improvements in gender equality, health and nutrition, reductions in infant and child mortality and decreases in the prevalence of HIV/AIDS.[10] Similar to Kiva's partnership model[11] The School Fund partners with a network of non-governmental organizations which identify qualified students to post on the crowdfunding platform.[12]

History

The School Fund was founded in 2010 by Matt Severson, Roxana Moussavian and Andrew Perrault, all then Brown University students.[13] The idea to raise money for students' school fees stemmed from Severson's 2007 trip to Tanzania, where he met a boy who could not afford to pay his school fees.[1]

In 2010, The School Fund won the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI University), University Commitment Challenge[14] and was awarded the Clinton Global Initiative University Outstanding Commitment Award.[15]

In 2012, Grammy award-nominated singer Carolyn Malachi released her music video for the song "Free Your Mind" on GOOD's online platform with product placement featuring The School Fund. Each view of the video resulted in one hour of classroom time, funded by the #IAMCampaign and Chegg.[16]

In 2013, Education Generation (EdGen) merged with The School Fund.[17]

Since The School Fund's founding, Severson continued heading the nonprofit while simultaneously working at Google.[18]

Impact of School Fees

The School Fund provides scholarships to secondary students for whom educational costs and fees would otherwise limit access to education. Many working children do not go to school or drop out due to the opportunity costs to parents for keeping their children in school instead of working.[19] For many poor households, the expense of school fees prohibits children from attending school altogether.[20]

The United Nations' second Millennium Development Goal is to achieve universal access to primary education, and as one means of doing so, recommends the abolition of school fees that make it difficult for families to send their children to school.[21] In 2013 and after many primary school fees had been eliminated, the UN found that enrollment in primary education in developing regions reached 90 percent in 2010, up from 82 percent in 1999.[22]

Countries that have abolished school fees at the primary level have seen increases in school attendance, with 42 percent increased enrollment in sub-Saharan Africa between 2000 and 2007.[23] When Kenya eliminated primary and reduced secondary fees, attendance went up by 1.3 million students between 2002 and 2004.[24]

In countries that have eliminated primary school fees, increased primary school attendance has not necessarily led to transition rates to secondary school. "Bottlenecks" in these countries' educational systems are often caused by the increased costs families associate with secondary school for tuition fees, uniforms and time away from employment and household chores.[25] Secondary education is more costly per student than primary education and distance to school often increases at the secondary level.[26] By August 2014, The School Fund had assisted over 850 secondary level students, in 15 developing countries.[27]

References
  1. Lamb, Gregory M., "Matt Severson Funds Students in Need One by One", The Christian Science Monitor, September 16, 2014
  2. Hollow, Matthew,“Crowdfunding and Civic Society in Europe: A Profitable Partnership”, Open Citizenship, vol. 4, issue 1, 2013
  3. Goodman, Lawrence, "Matt Severson, '11", Brown Alumni Magazine, May/June 2011.
  4. Unicef,“On Global Action Week on Education, millions of children still not in school”, April 23, 2007
  5. Epstein, Mark J. and Kristi Yuthas, “Redefining Education in the Developing World: A new approach that builds relevant marketplace, entrepreneurship, and health care skills is needed”, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2012,
  6. Weller, Drika "A Global Education Crisis Disproportionately Affecting Girls" Girl Rising.
  7. "For Just $150, You Can Send a Kid to High School", TakePart Live, August 14, 2014.
  8. Gomstyn, Alice "Brothers Start Pancake Business to Fund Kenyan Teen's School Tuition", Babble, July 2014.
  9. Byrne, Kate,“Education: Giving Voice and Choice to Girls - That Which Can Be Learned Can Never be Taken Away”,OpenIDEO, March 1, 2014
  10. Kanamori, Mariano J. and Thomas Pullum,“Indicators of Child Deprivation in Sub-Saharan Africa: Levels and Trends from the Demographic and Health Surveys”, USAID, December 2013
  11. Walker, Ken, "The Kiva Effect", Christianity Today,
  12. Kendrick, Chris,“Palo Alto Nonprofit Funds Education Around the World”, Palo Alto Weekly, September 15, 2013
  13. Korngold, Alice, “CGI University Gets Involved: Microscholarships, Hens for Haiti, Waterwheels and More”, "Fast Company", March 29, 2012
  14. "Clinton Global Initiative U. Winners Announced" CBS News, April 4, 2011.
  15. Clinton Global Initiative University,“CGI U Outstanding Commitment Awards 2010”.
  16. Malachi, Carolyn, “Innovative Product Placement Makes this Music Video a Vehicle for Good”, GOOD, December 17, 2012
  17. Wu, Christina,“How to Merge Two Nonprofits: Five Lessons Learned”, Tech Soup Canada, retrieved May 27, 2014
  18. E.C.,“Working Overtime”, "The Economist", July 16, 2012
  19. Thortsen, Dorte, “Children Working in Commercial Agriculture: Evidence from West and Central Africa”, UNICEF, April 2012
  20. Peverly, S. T. February 18, 2005, "Moving past cultural homogeneity: Suggestions for comparisons of students' educational outcomes in the United States and China", Psychology of the Schools, Feb 18, 2005
  21. UN Department of Public Information,“Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education”, September 25, 2008
  22. United Nations,“2013 Fact Sheet: Target 2.A: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling”, United Nations, retrieved June 2, 2014
  23. Tafirenyika, Masimba, "Abolishing Fees Boosts African Schooling", Africa Renewal Magazine, January 10, 2010, p. 16
  24. Burnett, John, "Kenya's Free Schools Bring a Torrent of Students", NPR, July 16, 2012.
  25. Provost, Claire,“Developing countries face growing secondary education challenge”, The Guardian, October 25, 2011
  26. Motivans, Albert,“Global Education Digest 2011: Comparing Educational Statistics Across the World”, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2011, p. 8
  27. Severson, Matt, "71 Million High School Age Kids Have Dropped Out--Here's a Way to Help", TakePart, August 14, 2014.
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