When Aneesah Allen first enrolled at Spelman College, she spent two and a half years working toward her degree before she was forced to drop out. Her problems were exclusively financial — she did not have enough money to complete her program. It would be several years before Allen would go on to earn her bachelor's from the University of Mississippi, and almost a decade after that before she would earn her master's degree in higher education from Walden University.
Allen's story is not unique. A growing number of college students drop out each year due to financial constraints, while the cost of higher education continues to rise. In response, Allen began helping students crowdfund to fill in the gaps, all while she worked at Georgia State University in Atlanta.
Meanwhile, an old classmate from her Spelman days was doing something similar. Shironda White, an MBA student at Boston University with a background in philanthropy, was coordinating scholarships for students with financial needs. In 2017, White and Allen decided to join forces and launch CauseEDU, a crowdfunding platform for college students. They envisioned it as a direct tool to keep students enrolled, and they charged a 5 percent fee to kick off their business.
"Students [who dropped out] fell into two categories," White said. "One category was life: parents get divorced, someone loses a job or gets sick, something happens... The second, larger group was students who didn't understand how much college cost until they got there."
CauseEDU focused mainly on the crowdfunding platform for its first year. Then, in 2018, the startup hit major competition when GoFundMe made its platform free. White and Allen quickly pivoted. The two started creating programming around financial planning, with the goal of helping students manage their finances at the source, before they even entered college.
Today, Boston-based CauseEDU provides tailored programs for organizations, companies and schools to help families with their college funding needs. The startup also offers one-on-one consultations for families as well as an online platform that helps families understand and budget for college. The crowdfunding tool is still live, but it is no longer CauseEDU's main selling point.
For its programs, CauseEDU charges a one-time, annual fee of either $99 or $199, depending on the plan. White says the startup saves families an average of $10,000 on college tuition.
"What we're all really focusing on is the CauseEDU Financial Planning Academy. We pull together financial advisors, financial aid consultants and college admissions officers," White said. "If you have money, if you can afford it, then parents will pay for a financial advisor or a college financial planner to help them through the process. Most families are not paying for that." White added that free services, like college career counselors, are typically overwhelmed and as a result underserve the students who need them.
White heads up CauseEDU as CEO. Allen worked as CauseEDU's chief partnerships officer until recently; she stepped away in late 2020. The two are now both at Georgia State University, where White has set up CauseEDU programs for students in Georgia State's Upward Bound program. White said CauseEDU has entered talks with at least one Boston-area community college, although she declined to name the institution.
Going forward, CauseEDU plans to operate on a B2B model in addition to its consumer-centric programs. White thinks colleges would be interested in footing the bill for her startup's programs, which could help them increase their retention rate and boost their rankings. So would student loan companies, White says: The default rate for students who drop out is significantly higher than for students who graduate.
CauseEDU has so far raised just under $100,000 in non-dilutive funding and plans to stay mostly bootstrapped for as long as possible. The startup came in first place at last year’s Roxbury Pitch Night and went on to win a $25,000 award at MassChallenge. White has also participated in programs run by Founder Gym, The Capital Network and EforAll.
"We're focused on helping students to understand the process, to negotiate, to understand financial aid officers, to understand what's best for them when it comes to paying for college," White said.
She paraphrases a quote from Desmond Tutu: "There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."
CauseEDU is one of BostInno's 21 Startups to Watch in 2021. Hear from White and other founders at our event on Feb. 10. Register here.
This article has been updated due to incorrect information provided by CauseEDU CEO Shironda White. White currently works at Georgia State University and has set up CauseEDU programs for its students, but the university has no contract with the startup. Co-founder Aneesah Allen served as chief partnerships officer until late 2020, when she stepped away from the startup's operations.
