A couple weeks ago, Neerav Kingsland asked, "why aren't more people crowdfunding schools?" The argument was primarily financial in nature; using back-of-the-envelope math, he estimated that a family considering private school could save $150k over a child's lifetime by financing the startup costs of a public charter school.
It's been a busy September. Here are my belated thoughts -
Call me pessimistic, but I see ideas like this potentially widening the achievement gap, not closing it. I'll let Matt Candler take the "yes, and" approach. I'm feeling very "hey, wait a second" about this question.
For starters, it makes me think a LOT about whose money we're taking at the charter school whose board I sit on, the inevitable influence of those donors, and the power dynamics between those who give financially and those who give in other ways or not at all. I agree with Neerav's premise that we should be innovating with respect to the way schools are funded, but also need to be mindful of how direct/crowd funding can unlevel the playing field.
A friend who runs a charter school mused, "What if we did a 100% anonymous crowdfunding (anonymous even to us at the school site)? Might that be able to get at the ends that Neerav and Matt suggest while still side-stepping the implied consequences of money as influence?"
To which I replied, "Would seem to me that in order to make philanthropic contributions completely anonymous, you'd have to set up a separate 'holding' 501c3/fund, that takes in individual contributions, documents them for tax purposes, and then allocates the aggregate funding to the school in one lump sum. I really like the idea of making all contributions - from a parent's $10 donation to a Walton grant - anonymous, so that no one donor gets special privileges like information rights, etc. Except how realistic is this? Seems pretty idealistic. Would Walton ever agree? Worth thinking through further though."