Entrepreneurs have all kinds of ideas. All they need is money. That’s even more difficult if you are student entrepreneurs. They may know how to build a robot, but they likely don’t have the skills to sell it. So existing fundraising sites like Go Fund Me don’t really help much.
A group of middle school students from Venture Academy Charter School in Minneapolis created a solution: Students Solve. Their solution was so creative, and met such a universal need that it won a Minnesota design contest over all other adult entrepreneur teams.
As reported by Beth Hawkins of educationpost.org, these middle school students created a prototype online fundraising platform “that is simple and intuitive enough for kids, or their time-pressed teachers, to use.”
They pitched their idea. They caught a web developer who volunteered to help. They created a questionnaire for potential fundraisers to complete. The answers, captured in a database, were formatted into a template for fundraiser homepages, an email-blast, press release, and other marketing materials.
Judges were impressed by how the students gathered feedback and data from likely users and used it to refine their site.
To make this site fully operational, students will likely need to hire programming assistance. Maybe they will need to crowdsource for themselves? Whatever the outcome, these students know they can solve real problems in a real world.
They are ready for a 21st century world.
