Victoria Uribe
Communication Assistant
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Village Scholarships will launch a crowdfunding site this summer to help eliminate student debt. Siblings Antonio and Tasha Adams co-founded Village Scholarships to help college students struggling with debt by way of crowdfunding.
Since Kickstarter’s launch in 2009 and GoFundMe in 2010, Village Scholarships crowdfunding concept is hardly new to the game.
What separates Village Scholarships is restricting raised funds solely for college students and their education. Students can receive funds from family, friends, organizations and foundations.
After attending five universities and difficulty earning two basketball scholarships due to physical injuries, Antonio brought this idea to fruition.
Tasha saw the success in Antonio’s idea and set aside her education for a full year to make the concept happen.
Both siblings decided to empower students by offering the possibility of launching their own campaign to collect funds for their college tuition.
The siblings appeared on the ABC television series “Shark Tank.” While their pitch received no interest, Tasha and Antonio continued to advance their website and set a goal of raising $1 million in scholarships.
The way Village Scholarships works is similar to a dating website.
“Imagine Crowdfunding meets online dating on steroids and you have the essence of our platform,” Antonio Adams, CEO and co-founder of Village Scholarships said.
According to Village Scholarship’s website, “crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising monetary funds contributions from a large number of people typically via the Internet.”
Students and donors create a profile with Village Scholarships linking students to eligible scholarships provided by donors. These matches vary from 1-1 to 5-1 ratio.
“So simply, a student [fundraises] money first, then receives matching points to use in our scholarship store to shop for scholarship and gifts,” Antonio said. “Lastly, the accumulated amount of funds, including shopped scholarships, will be sent to the student’s institution.”
“If [students are] looking and finding all these cool ways to apply for scholarships, then by all means, certainly do that,” said Celia Velez, scholarship and grant coordinator at Texas A&M University-San Antonio.
“But you also want to be a little more cautious too and see what information are they asking. What are the drawbacks? Does the website seem legitimate?”
While these questions raise valid concerns, students may find web-based scholarships practical.
“I think it’s a good idea,” junior psychology major Samantha Thompson said. “I’m used to the online aspect of things, I guess because most of the classes I’ve taken have been online.”
Velez encourages students to apply for scholarships prepared by Texas-A&M University-San Antonio’s office of scholarships and financial aid. Students can find these under the Quick Links tab on the university’s website.
The available scholarships on the website are pre-screened and strictly apply at Texas A&M University-San Antonio, Velez said.
While Village Scholarships continues to develop, students and donors can expect the full website to launch in June.
Meanwhile, Antonio and Tasha Adams are accepting donations to assist their further developments. Users may register to begin building their online campaign.
“Village Scholarships is an interruptive technology that can shift the paradigm and change the way people think about funding their college education,” Antonio added. “
“We will seek to scale and broaden our impact over time to help millions of students achieve their singular goal of a paying for their college education.
