How GoFundMe Changed 3 Students’ Fortunes

Tatia Little’s son, Fred T. Gaddy, just can’t seem to catch a break, she says. As a young black man from Baltimore who dreams of working in advertising, Mr. Gaddy “seems to have fallen through every crack that exists,” his mother says.

Ms. Little started a fund-raising campaign on the website GoFundMe to help her son finish his senior year at the School of Visual Arts, an art and design college in New York City, seven months ago. Last year Mr. Gaddy was forced to defer starting his final year after failing to get together the money for tuition, but this year Ms. Little is determined that he will finish his studies.

Ms. Little is one of one of 130,000 people who have turned to GoFundMe in the past three years to ask friends, relatives, social-network acquaintances, and even strangers to help cover their education expenses.

While a number of crowdfunding websites are helping people raise money for various projects these days, GoFundMe has become a favorite among students. The platform noted its growing popularity among students in a guidebook it published last month, describing resources it has added to help people fine-tune campaigns that seek money for education.

Many fund raisers, like Ms. Little, say the crowdfunding option was a last resort.

“It’s not something I would typically do. I don’t like to ask for help,” she said of her decision to start the campaign. “But I figured there was no harm in trying.”

Ms. Little, her son, and their family have worked together to help get him through college, but last year, after two deaths in the family, they reached a tipping point. They had exhausted all their back-up financial options, and Mr. Gaddy didn’t get any of the scholarships he was hoping for.

Setting up the campaign was “very, very easy,” Ms. Little said, and while she hasn’t reached her $20,000 target, she has raised over $6,000. Mr. Gaddy still has a tuition balance to pay, but the college has allowed him to return to class, she said. “It may hinder him in so far as getting the actual paper diploma, but at least he’ll be able to finish the course.”

In the beginning, the fund raising was slow, Ms. Little said, but recently the campaign seems to have caught a second wind. Ms. Little has been trying a different approach — contacting people outside her immediate circle, such as alumni of her son’s college and prominent people in the advertising field where he hopes to work.

Helping a Roommate

Like Ms. Little, Ana Diaz Covarrubias, a student at Texas A&M University, did not start a GoFundMe campaign for herself — but for her roommate, Daniella.

In her campaign, Ms. Diaz Covarrubias wrote: “I have recently heard some terrible news from my roomate Daniella. This morning she txted me, ‘My mom can’t pay my tuiton... I have to drop out of Texas A&M until she can afford it.’ This txt immediately made me sick.”

According to Ms. Diaz Covarrubias, her roommate held a Regents’ Scholarship, awarded under a program that helps first-generation college students achieve their educational goals at Texas A&M. But the scholarship covered only part of her tuition.

Ms. Diaz Covarrubias set out to raise $3,500 in five days — and managed to raise more than that in two days.

Ms. Diaz Covarrubias said she started the campaign page by finding a picture of her roommate and writing about her story. She wanted to get across Daniella’s personality, and why people should support her.

Promoting the campaign took around two days of solid work, Ms. Diaz Covarrubias said. She shared it primarily through Facebook, but also through Instagram and Twitter.

Though the response was initially slow, Ms. Diaz Covarrubias managed to convince some students at a nearby campus housing complex to share Daniella’s story through their group Twitter account, and the campaign took off from there. “It wasn’t just all my work, it was definitely the whole Texas A&M community that helped to put it out there and helped us reach our goal.”

Before starting the campaign, Ms. Diaz Covarrubias says she went to the university’s financial advisers to find out what options were open to her friend. That “wasn’t very helpful,” she said. “They said, There’s nothing we can do.”

Though Ms. Diaz Covarrubias was able to help her friend to get out of trouble with a successful emergency fund-raising campaign, she said the experience was stressful, and she urges other students not to get into a similar situation.

“Look for scholarships outside of the university and apply for as many as you can. The essays are really annoying to write, but it’s worth it.” she said. “Keep yourself organized, don’t put yourself in a position where you have five days to find out if you’re going to be dropped out of the university of your dreams.”

An Immigrant’s Plight

Carlos A. Roa Jr. set out to raise funds to complete his own studies Forty-three months ago, he started a campaign to raise $30,000 to cover the educational costs not met by his scholarship. He raised over $12,000 through GoFundMe, and graduated with his architecture degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology last year.

Mr. Roa’s path to graduation was not an easy one. As an undocumented student — his parents brought him to the United States from Venezuela when he was only 2 — he didn’t qualify for in-state tuition in his home state of Florida. Since graduating from high school in 2005, it has taken Mr. Roa years to complete his bachelor’s degree, as he has had to work and study at the same time.

For Mr. Roa, accesss to education for immigrants is a key issue, and one that he has gained media attention for as a human-rights activist. In 2010, Mr. Roa was one of four young immigrants who walked from Miami to Washington to support the Dream Act, legislation that was repeatedly introduced in Congress in an attempt to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented college students.

Mr. Roa says that engaging with the media and cultivating his network of contacts has been a huge help in raising money for his studies. Though he did not reach his goal of raising $30,000 through GoFundMe, he has received many more donations offline, he says.

Mr. Roa says he is often asked for advice from other undocumented students looking to raise money for their tuition, and he tells them to get personal — make videos of themselves showing who they are and what they’re about.

A lot of students feel ashamed about fund raising — “asking for money isn’t something that many people are comfortable with,” he said — and it’s not easy. “Sometimes you’ll be put in uncomfortable situations, but once you get over your fear or anxiety, your campaign will be very successful,” he said. “If you’re somebody that is outspoken, that is willing to talk to family, friends and contacts — even strangers, you’ll do well.”