Mecename

The world is losing innovations because some people, especially children, do not have access to the education they deserve following traditional paths. Mecename is the platform where students looking for funding their studies and philanthropist interested in helping individuals converge for the benefit of society. We firmly believe that everyone should have the possibility to use their capabilities to the fullest, which reverts to society.

There are thousands of brilliant minds that do not have their potential due to lack of access to proper education. This is negative both for individuals and for society in general. In the same way there is the intention to defray educational expenses in a disinterested way on the part of many people. The problem to solve is how to connect these needs with the solutions.

We detected that it is not possible to obtain scholarships for a certain type of education and in other cases, the bureaucracy required for the scholarships, discourages their application. We have created this platform with the intention that the cost is not an impediment to access to education.

Simultaneously, we have detected that it is not easy to collaborate in the education of people from other countries. There are suspicions and bureaucracy that discourage anonymous people who want to help selflessly.

The target population is on the one hand students who need to finance studies of any kind, from primary school to postgraduate courses; and on the other hand, people who want to help others to develop their capacities, but who do not have enough economic potential to have their own foundations and who also want to focus their efforts on specific people.

We have created a portal demo (mecename.com) and disseminated its existence to collect first-hand information from interested people, both students and donors. At the same time, we are contacting potential donors to know what their needs are and what characteristics would make our platform an interesting tool for them and in which they can trust.

The current solution, after the last pivot, is an online platform where students send their needs (school, studies, motivations, etc.) and where they are published anonymously to avoid bias. At the same time, anyone interested in financing all or part of these studies, can send their money through the platform.

Students are responsible for doing all the paperwork to get access to the academic institution. Once the approval is received, the payment is made directly to the institution; never the student. This is done to avoid fraud. If the student does not get for the reason that was the access to the course, the money is returned to the donors. If it is a diploma of several years, the donor can request certain minimum criteria to finance beyond the first year.

There is not a way for funding individual student needs for free. There are solutions where students have to pay later a % of their earnings or foundations who target specific segments, groups or locations. This idea is completely different. It brings the model of the collaborative economy to the education field. It allows the donors to target an specific need; to know what your are contributing to.    

The technology is a website which will contain a huge amount of data. This data will be used for improving students and donors conditions.  It will be used to detect trends in needs and making promotions campaigns. It can be in a future also used to create bots who will used information to offer the donors students matching some of criteria they have. Those bots will use machine learning techniques to learn what donors are funding with the criteria they had and to infer new knowledge based on the data we have. Those techniques can be used also to display the students the best education for their needs based on their profile and the data we have.   

As stated by the MIT, https://mitsloan-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/ideas-made-to-matter/lost-einsteins-us-may-have-missed-out-millions-inventors , there are a lot of potential not used within the US and even more in the rest of the world. 

We are working with potential donors to create solution they can trust. This is one of the biggest challenges, for people to trust the platform. the changes we did from the initial idea, such as keeping always the money on the platform and pay only to the educational institution, are improving the trust of donors. In this case, they will receive a copy of the payment receipt sent by the educational institution.

We are still collecting data from the Minimum Viable Product we did (mecename.com). 

If we count a served person as one who obtained a grant, we are currently serving 0 people. But we have already some student needs registered and we are on conversations with some potential important donors.  

In one year we hope to have 25 students granted. 

In five years, if we are still alive, it means that the concept worked. We think we could be in more than 1,000 students per year.

Within the next year our goal is to make the platform known and to get, at least, one important donor who would guarantee the survival of the platform. 

The goal for the next five years is to grow and serve students worldwide, specially to target STEM education among women and in the least developed countries. Our target is that at least 25% of our granted students are from that segment.

Our barriers are to get a critical mass of donors interested in the platform. We do not think that the availability of students could be an issue. Money can be received and required in many different currencies. We would need to have a financial structure able to handle it, specially when the numbers of grants start to be significant. 

Another important barrier is to find the right amount charged for each grant and the schema used. We are still studying if the donor should contribute with an additional 1% of the cost or if the student has to contribute with that 1% as a way to demonstrate their interest for doing those studies. 

For the donors, we are planning to target individuals and making online campaigns for attracting them. 

For the currency exchange issue, one of the people working part-time in the team is a treasury specialist and could help to set up the optimal structure to minimize the impact in the currency change.

For the charging schema, we are discussing with the potential donors the best solution. it seems that both schema proposed are interesting for them. In the case of very expensive students, they could cover the 1% while for another ones it is interesting the option of the student covering that 1% for demonstrating their commitment.     

3 part-time workers.

We are three people involved on this project. 

One of our team members has the financial knowledge we need. She has more than 12 years of international experience in finance position in multinational companies and international organizations. She has a wide knowledge of working with banks and currency operations in least developed countries and the risks and challenges of working with those countries. This is a critical advantage when you want to promote students from those countries.

Our second profile is an IT professional with more than 10 years of experience. He has been working mainly in web and mobile environments. His experience in the latest technologies, frameworks and future trends makes him the best possible candidate to lead the development of the platform. 

My profile is complementing the other two. I have worked for more than 12 years in international organizations in different sectors. Thanks to it, I have a vast network of contacts and perspectives that have allowed us to iterate different solution approaches until we arrived to the Mecename. I provide the vision for the solution and I also knowledge in other areas such as marketing, education, IT, management and negotiation.

We believe that we cover all the critical areas to be able to provide a successful solution.

None at the moment, but we are exploring contacting with European and American universities, as well as with UNESCO.

We have two key target populations: students with financial needs and donors who want to address specific educational needs. 

We offer the first group the opportunity for funding their studies. Getting accepted in the required institution is not the problem for them, but obtaining the money for covering tuition fees is a serious one. 

For the donors, we offer a secure and trustable platform for helping others to achieve their dreams; for helping students to develop their full capacities and improve society. Depending on the country where they live, they can also benefit from tax reductions by contributing to the education of others.

In the business model presented, we are planning to charge a 1% - to the donor or the student - for covering the staff, platform and financial costs. 

We are also planning to have some income by promoting universities and other educational institutions in our site. It is going to be visited by thousands of students seeking for grants and institutions to study want they want. 

First of all, it would give us the visibility that we need, specially to get people with resources interested in helping students.

Secondly, it would allow us to discuss our solution with other experts and entrepreneurs. This would allow us to escalate the solution and to have with more chances to success. The feedback obtained would help to refine the concept to deliver the best value to the the society while having a sustainable model. 

Winning the prize would give us a much higher chance to access faster the US market. We would need eventually to partner with some educational and public institutions for speeding up processes and the reputation obtained with the prize would open us many doors.

Last but not least, access to this community of brilliant people it is a motivation by itself. 

I would like to partner with educational institutions. We could we agreements with them for obtaining a reduction in the fees for students obtaining a grant via our platform and/or making easier the application process. We could also discuss marketing options for exchanging advertisements or getting paid campaigns.  

We will use the data we have in our platform for offering donors the best students matching their criteria and to infer new knowledge about trends and needs based on the students data. Those analysis could detect current and future working market needs. 

We will use the price to complete the development of the platform and marketing purposes. We have the commitment for the fifth year to have 20% of the granted students being women doing STEM education and coming from least developed countries. We will get this by doing campaigns for getting the students and also by promoting these type of education and candidates to the donors. 

We will use the price to complete the development of the platform and marketing purposes. We have the commitment for the fifth year to have 20% of the granted students being women doing STEM education and coming from least developed countries. We will get this by doing campaigns for getting the students and also by promoting these type of education and candidates to the donors. 

We would use the prize reward for creating campaigns for getting donors for students who are refugees. I believe we could get with our current network some agreement with the UN Refugee Agency to get students and provide opportunities to them. 

There are millions of future inventors lost every year in the US because children do no get the education they need to unlock their potential (https://mitsloan-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/ideas...). The money would be used to complete the development of the platform and to do marketing campaigns in the US schools to attract students with low income but high potential. At the same time, it would be used for making campaigns to inform and attract donors to this target population.