How I Raised $27,000 for an LLM at Harvard
*This post is an excerpt from The Ultimate Guide to Funding Your Master's Degree, in full available here.
Crowdfunding for your degree sounds unorthodox. But it literally changed my life, and I want to share my experience. I hope it changes yours as well.
There are a few reasons I consider it important to talk about crowdfunding as a potential part of the strategy for funding a master's degree.
Crowdfunding campaign gives you a platform to tell your story through, a platform that's 100% visible and transparent. A platform that allows other people to see who you are, check your credibility, and track your progress in real time. It's easier to approach people, companies, and NGOs with a query about funding your degree when you have something visible and tangible on the Internet – like a crowdfunding campaign.
Before I launched my campaign, I felt uncomfortable approaching people and companies and asking them to invest in my studies. In every email, I had to explain who I was, what I was doing, why I was reaching out to them, etc., etc.
However, once I launched the campaign, it became a lot easier. The campaign did all of that for me. Moreover, people could share it on social media (it was shared about 2,000 times on Facebook alone) and everyone could see at any time of day and night how I was doing. It kept people engaged and created a sense of participation and an atmosphere of transparency. It also made it easier for the final sponsor, a Russian NGO, to cover the outstanding balance.
Finally, a campaign functions like an accountability buddy. Once it’s there, publicly visible and available to everyone, it motivates you to do stuff, promote it, and generally take action to make it successful. You won’t just leave your campaign halfway as you could if approaching people privately just because you don’t feel like finishing it. A public campaign provides a strong stimulus for you to finish what you’ve started, leading you to success.
The Backstory
I get a lot of different reactions when I mention that I raised $27,000 for Harvard. A friend of mine, years after knowing me, still likes to say: ‘You must be so popular back in Russia to have raised that money!’ (I still can’t withhold a smile when remembering that 🙈).
But generally, people assume that my process was simple: I got the admission offer, thought ‘ok, I’m just going to take other people’s money’, and took other people's money. That could not be further from truth. Crowdfunding happened out of desperation, after two years of applying for a master of laws, not comprehending how education could be so inaccessible because of the things I’ve been born into, and a fierce desire to get out of the life script that my nationality, socio-economic status, and upbringing imposed on me.
Here is a recount of how I came to crowdfunding.
(apologies if it’s long; it’s not self-indulgence; I just want to show the sheer complexity of it, so that if you decide to do the same, you don't give up)
In 2017, I decided to apply for a master of laws in the United States. I’ve done a bunch of exchange studies in Europe before that, all of them funded by scholarships. My family never funded my study trips because they simply couldn’t: I grew up in a village on the outskirts of Moscow, my father working as a plumber and an electrician. My mom was living in Kazan, a city 800 km from Moscow, raising my younger sister on a salary of a kindergarten teacher, notoriously underpaid in Russia, and trying to get herself out of an abusive relationship.
I submitted my applications, both for admissions and for all the scholarships that I knew of. A few months later, I got the admission from Harvard, among others, and the question of funding inevitably came up again.
From Harvard, I got financial aid in the form of a $30,000 grant. To fund this degree, I needed $62,000 more. For the next couple of months, I've researched more scholarships. I was convinced that I just did not know enough about scholarships available in the US and I just had to find them. The search was successful: I found a scholarship in the amount of $28,000 from the Russian-United States Legal Education Foundation, applied, and got it. The thing was, it came with an obligation not to seek employment anywhere outside of Russia for two years after the graduation. That meant that even if (hypothetically) I wanted to work the U.S. and make a lot of money afterwards, I was ethically obliged not to.
I considered loans, but they were not an option for me. Russian banks didn't have loan programs for education abroad. A loan from Harvard bank initially fell through as well: when I tried to fill in their application, the website warned me that as a citizen of the country under sanctions I was not eligible.
I finally had to conclude that funding was not a matter of me not finding it. There were simply no more scholarships I was eligible for.
I then I decided to do a different search. I googled: what do people do when they don’t have full funding? The results returned a story about a British girl who crowdfunded £26,000 for her master's at Oxford. At first, I thought the idea of crowdfunding for education was absurd. Who would give their hard-earned cash for someone's personal project? I buried it for a while.
However, the deadline for paying tuition drew closer, and I was running out of time. I reconsidered the decision not to crowdfund. After all, I didn’t have anything to lose. If I tried crowdfunding, I could at least tell myself that I truly, truly exhausted all the options I had.
I got to work. I researched successful crowdfunding campaigns, wrote a text for the website and a script for the video, found a public library to film the promo video in, went there with my sister, and filmed two videos – one in English and one in Russian. I edited the footage and uploaded it to the Indiegogo website (they had a non-profit branch called 'Generosity' at the time). I launched the campaign, promoted it, and closed it successfully in 3 weeks.
After that, I paid my tuition and went to Harvard to have one of the best years of my life.
Actionable Guidelines
Guideline no. 1: Don't throw a pity party
Crowdfunding for a personal cause is different from crowdfunding for a business or an art project. The latter can be easier, because the project itself has a value that's not limited to you. That means you can ask people to contribute and then offer something in return, like the shares of your company or copies of your new album.
Crowdfunding for a personal project such as education is different. It's about you and your personal story only. There is nothing in it for other people (presumably), so it's much harder to sell. Consequently, a lot of people, when crowdfunding for a personal cause try to throw a pity party. Instead of making their contributors feel inspired by their journey, they complain and talk about how life’s been unfair to them, presenting it as the main reason for why people should contribute to their campaign.
I had to make this choice myself. I was really tempted to talk about things that did not go well in my life, like growing up in a country house with no indoor toilet (imagine using that in winter at -20C), having a psychologically abusive grandmother telling me since I was 7 that I was a daughter of a prostitute, and growing up without a mother. I decided not to do that. Not because it wasn't valuable - it was and is extremely valuable. It's what made me who I am today. However, I decided that my pain didn’t define me. The way I built my life in these circumstances did. Not for the purposes of the crowdfunding campaign anyway.
I wanted people to feel inspired. I didn’t want them to contribute because they pitied me. I wanted them to see a brilliant lawyer who achieved so much in extreme adversity, genuinely in love with what she was doing and needing an extra help to make this crazy dream of hers come true. This strategy seems to have worked out.
When you crowdfund for a personal cause, keep in mind that people contribute not because of the cause itself. They contribute if and when they like you as a person. They contribute to become a part of your story, to feel that they've increased the amount of good on this earth.
Guideline no. 2: Make it reciprocal
When crowdfunding for a personal project, you usually don’t as many tools to reward and thank your contributors, like you do when you crowdfund for business or for an art project. Still, there are ways to express your gratitude and make your campaign more reciprocal and less one-sided.
One of the ways you can do this is to offer something in return for a contribution. The things you can offer will largely depend on what you do well. For instance, I offered my lawyering services at a discounted price and assistance with graduate applications. I’ve seen other people offer business consulting (a guy crowdfunding for a startup summer bootcamp), handmade jewelry (a girl crowdfunding for a degree in jewelry), and the like.
Think of what you do best and offer your contributors help with that.
If you think you don't have anything to offer, think again. Everybody has something to offer. If you are at a stage of your life when you are applying for an advanced degree, you must have acquired a variety of skills by now. What do people most often ask your help with? What could you do for them?
You don’t need to be at the level of absolute mastery. The point of offering something is not to show off your expertise. The point is to express your gratitude and to alleviate the emotional burden you'll feel when accepting other people's money for your project. It won’t feel as bad when you are not just asking people to give their hard-earned cash to you, but also offering them something valuable in return.
Guideline no. 3: Promotion is just as important as the launch
I don’t mean promotion is a sleazy salesman way. I mean telling people that you are raising money for your studies.
You have to carefully plan both the launch and the promotion of your campaign. Don’t stop after launch. The launch is only half of the job. The success of your campaign depends on its promotion just as much as it depends on the pre-launch preparation.
To promote your campaign, make a list of people you’ll ask to spread the news about your campaign. In addition, have a list of friends you’ll ask to contribute a small amount at the very beginning, so that your campaign doesn't have a zero balance at the start. A zero balance can psychologically prevent people from contributing, because they’ll think that no one is contributing, so why should they? Offer to reimburse your friends for these expenses, preferably in advance, i.e., before they spend their own money. Post the information about your campaign on social media, in professional networks, etc. Send personal emails to every person you’ve ever had a positive interaction with, but don’t spam them – an email at the start and a follow-up email closer to the middle or the end of campaign is enough.
You have to keep momentum of the campaign going. If you don’t do it, no one will.
Guideline no. 4: Treat each contributor as a love affair
When you write emails and messages to people asking them to contribute to your campaign, treat each and every person as a short-term love affair.
Remember, it’s your personal project. No one owes you anything. If, when, and how much anyone decides to contribute is entirely their own good will. Don’t complain about the size of the contributions. It doesn’t matter whether it's $1, $10 or $100 – if they decided to share their cash with you, it’s already an incredible gift. Be grateful.
The same goes for the post-contribution interactions – don’t just leave it there. Follow up with a warm and personal gratitude email (not addressed to a bunch of people at the same time – personal!!). Let your contributors know how much it means to you – each and every single one of them.
Guideline no. 5: Make a video
Make a video for your campaign. Video feels more authentic and shows that you've put in the effort. If you are going ask people to share their money with you, you need to show that you’ve done the work. Not making a video can be perceived as lazy.
Video will make people feel connected to you. It will also show them that you are a real person, you are actually doing this campaign, and you really need their help. Generally speaking, people are more likely to watch a video than to read the text, and a campaign with a video will feel more alive than a campaign without it.
Guideline no. 6: Don't be afraid to ask
It’s amazing how far you can get by explicitly asking for what you need. Don’t be afraid to approach people directly and ask them to contribute (politely, genuinely, no stalking). If you ask, there will be two options: they will either contribute or they won't. However, if you don't ask, they will only be one, and they'll never have a chance to contribute.
It never hurts to ask.
***
If you are interested, as a matter of reference, my campaign still available online here.
Now, go and get that money.
And in the meantime, I'll be waiting.
