Pauline Muturi moved to the U.S. from Kenya when she was two years old. Now 21, she’s a senior at Florida State University, a first-generation college student aiming to go into pediatric care. She works two jobs and still says she's missed tuition payment deadlines.
“There’s times that I had so much anxiety I couldn’t sleep, because it’s like, you know, you have to work this shift and you have this exam on this day. And it was definitely overwhelming,” Muturi said. But she believes in education. “My degree is the only thing that can really make me something and somebody,” she said.
Earlier this month, she learned she had won $10,000.
Muturi is one of 10 winners in a contest held in September by social fundraising platform GoFundMe to help pay for higher education. Their stories include gang activity, homelessness, single motherhood, and Tourette syndrome. There’s a graduate student who grew up in Guam and is interested in architecture, and a young man who spent part of his childhood on a Navajo reservation in Arizona and wants to fly.
That’s Thayne Yazzie, 25, who already has his bachelor’s degree. As a child, he said, he was medevacked after falling out of a tree. Now he's training to fly helicopters at Vertical Limit Aviation in Albuquerque, which has a partnership with Eastern New Mexico University at Roswell, where Yazzie plans to begin related online coursework next year. He wants to bring his services back to the reservation.
Yazzie started his GoFundMe campaign in April, long before the contest began and is the only winner whose page promises donors something in return—his artwork, from a $10 print to a $360 commission to a $50,000 painting.
College tuition has become unaffordable for millions of Americans, with almost $1.3 trillion in federal student debt held by more than 41 million borrowers. Many graduates enter the working world weighed down by loans. It is in this high-stress environment that some people are finding creative ways to fund some of their education costs.
SponsorChange helps people pay down student debt in return for volunteer work, while GiftofCollege.com facilitates gifts to 529 or student-loan accounts. The business model may vary among platforms. GoFundMe, which now offers a guarantee against misuse of funds raised, subtracts fees from donations. More than $1.5 million a month is donated to college campaigns on the platform, according to the company.
Chief Executive Officer Rob Solomon said the contest is a reminder that people can use GoFundMe not only to “pay your medical bills or when a disaster strikes and there’s flooding or a fire. We want people to know that you can use this for everything where the need arises.”
Crowdfunding your education has its problems, among them pride. For Yazzie, “it was always really hard to ask for money. So I figured by putting art up it would be a way to give back to people who donate,” he said.