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Funny enough, I've had a similar idea in my notes.txt for a few months.

"microscholarships, crowdsourced, donorschoose for people"

I suppose students would have a page about themselves and donors would pick students to support based on their circumstances, talents, grades, and personality.

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So really it woud be more like Kiva; loaning money to people based on charity. The problem with that is what makes Kiva so rewarding is the quick turnaround times, where you loan someone something and you get part of it back only a few months later to help other people with. That wouldn't work with student loans.

http://educationgeneration.org/

Except that it wouldn't be a loan, rather it'd be a scholarship or fund. The student should not be expected to pay it back, so I guess it would be someone like 'ChipIn' in that regards. If the site were built similarly to KickStarter, where the student posted a video and could post their grades, they could more easily solicit donations from friends and family. The organization could send the money to the university as a grant rather than to the student directly to lower the chance of the system being used for fraud.

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