Ending student debt through scholarships on bold.org

The Bold Foundation and has been working to end student debt since 2019.

“The goal of our work is to eliminate student debt in the U.S.,” Alex Salsberry, search engine optimization manager said. “It’s pretty obvious that student debt is a big issue and before being a company, finding that is a big need.”

 “The foundation awarded more than 300 scholarships in 2021 and is on track to award more than 1,000 scholarships in 2022,” said Dror Liebenthal, the co-founder and CEO. “Working with donors ranging from individuals to public companies, we’re the largest independent scholarship provider in the country.”

Bold.org is completely free for both students and donors to use.

“The reason Bold is so cool and unique is that it’s 100% free for students to use. So, in terms of creating a profile and finding scholarships — it’s all free,” Salsberry said. “And they work really hard to keep it free.” 

Students can sign up and match with scholarships they qualify for by answering some questions and displaying their academic, extracurricular, career and demographic background. 

“It was super easy to sign up, they just ask you questions about yourself. Along the way, you can answer questions and they tell you what scholarships you can apply for,” said Attie Mellman, a student at Utah State University.

Once students navigate to the non-profit website and continue as an applicant to sign up, the algorithm matches students to scholarships they are more likely to qualify for based on the information they provided.

“We look at the eligibility criteria and application volume for each one of 500-plus scholarships currently hosted and awarded exclusively on the Bold.org platform, helping students pinpoint the opportunities best suited to them,” Liebenthal said.

All of the scholarship goes directly from the donor to the student it is awarded to. There are no fees withheld. Donors, just like students, create a profile and then they pitch their scholarship idea. Within a few days, a call will be set up with the donor as a pitch meeting. 

“It’s kind of hands off from the donor site because from there, the team will put together the landing page and everything else for the donor,” Salsberry said. “Then at that point, once the landing page is done and the scholarship is funded by the donor, it goes live.”

Many other scholarship websites charge the donors a fee to publish their scholarships. The companies have many things they need to pay for, but at the cost of charging donors fees. The foundation has found a way to not have to do this.

This is possible because of their partnering companies that they work closely with. This allows the non-profit to make money to continue helping students fight debt. 

 Students can find a list of scholarships at https://bold.org/scholarships/.