It’s a tactic that parents have tried for generations: give kids money for good grades.
Now a startup out of Kellogg is aiming to take that idea and scale it to thousands of college students facing student loan debt and potentially dropping out because of financial difficulties.
The startup is called Acentive (pronounced “A-centive,” like the letter grade). They have a crowdfunding for college platform that is based off achievement. Students log on, make a profile, and share it with their networks. Donors then pledge to make a donation based on that student’s grades or GPA, based on what is a realistic achievement for that student. For every A a student gets, a donor could pledge $20, for every B, $10. Or if cumulatively they hit a certain GPA, the donor could give a lump sum. Students then get the money at the end of the semester once transcripts are checked by Acentive.
The idea is to incentivize realistic ambition while harnessing the power of a community.
“There are so many people in a student’s community who are willing to help,” said founder Mark Pawloski, a recent Kellogg alum.
“Students aren’t asking for a handout. Anything [they] get is going to be earned. It gives the students an ownership over their college experience.”
Pawloski has a background in both business and education. While working in banking for several years after college, he found he had more fun tutoring kids in his home city of Buffalo than he did during the day at his desk job. So he quit, joined Teach For America, and worked with students in inner-city Houston and Buffalo over the next several years. He found that even kids that were able to get into college, and fund tuition through scholarships and grants, had a tough time staying in school because of the little hidden costs that popped up during the year like lab fees and textbooks.
With that in mind, he decided to go to business school to figure out a way to give back to education on a larger scale.
Crowdfunding for college cost isn’t necessarily a new idea in the startup world. Here in Chicago, UChicago-based ScholarFlip is using the model to help students pay tuition at the end of their experience. So in order to differentiate, Pawloski said his service is more focused on helping students along the way as a means to prevent drop out, and if they raise enough, cut down on tuition costs as well. Students have discretion over what they spend the money on, so if they need it for textbooks or housings costs they can use it for those purposes. In the future, Pawloski anticipates partnering with schools so money could go directly to tuition.
Crowdfunding also brings up the question of economic access: middle or high income students who already have networks of people with discretionary income will have an easier time finding people who have extra cash to help them out each semester. Low income students may not have robust of a monetary network. To address this issue, Acentive is partnering with One Goal, a education nonprofit that aims to help underachieving students graduate from high school and college. Through this partnership, students will also be able to connect with donors through One Goal, which allows students to connect with a wider net of donors, and the nonprofit to keep tabs on students even after they graduate high school.
With all this being said, it can be tough to shout from social networks that a student needs money for college, especially for students who don’t have experience promoting themselves. Pawloski said on Acentive there are templates and tips for asking for financial support, which can help students get the ball rolling, and he has current students building exemplary profiles on the platform to provide best practice examples.
Acentive is launching this week, and Pawloski hopes to have 2,000 students on the platform by the end of October through outreach on One Goal and guidance counselors in the Chicagoland area. The company will make revenue by taking a five percent cut of the donations, and so far has been bootstrapped.
He hopes that this can be the start to solving tough problems students face when transitioning to higher education.
“What causes many inner city kids to drop out of school isn’t the fact that they can’t afford tuition, but the unexpected fees or books they just don’t have cash for,” he said. “We’re confident this platform can cover that gap, and keep kids persisting through college.”
