Scholarfund.org

What Scholarfund.org does

ScholarFund.org is a 501(c) non-profit corporation founded in 2011 and headquartered at 99 Madison Avenue, Suite 515 in New York City. The organization operates a web-based two-sided platform that enables individual donors to create and manage personally meaningful scholarships with custom criteria, while helping middle school, high school, and undergraduate students find and apply for those scholarships. The underlying platform comprises a scholarship management dashboard for donors, an online application portal for students, selection committee tools for objective award evaluation, a donation processing system (including crowd-sourced scholarship contributions), and a volunteer-driven Community Partnership Network of school leaders and outreach connectors.

The business model is structured around a transaction-fee mechanic rather than a traditional software pricing model: scholars and applicants are not charged to use the platform, and donors who set up scholarships are asked to pledge roughly 5-15% of the scholarship amount to sustain platform operations and further the organization's mission. The organization is documented as operating scholarships in California, New York, and Alabama, with named programs including the Oak Grove High School Working Students Scholarship ($2,000 award), the Hung Phi Tieu and Lan Vuong Scholarship for Alba Middle School, NYC Public High Schools scholarships, the California Working Student Scholarship, and the eMBA Reunion Scholarship. Founder Uyen Tieu established the entity after encountering $250K minimum endowment requirements at universities, and the platform was seeded through Board of Directors donations.

The organization is small (1-10 employees), with no disclosed external funding rounds, no parent company, no M&A activity, and no AI/ML capabilities in its product surface. Its current scale of documented scholarship activity is limited to the initial three awards in March 2012 and a handful of subsequent named programs, indicating an early-stage or lifestyle-scale non-profit operation rather than a venture-backed growth entity.

Name

Scholarfund.org

Legal name

Scholar Fund, Inc.

Website

https://scholarfund.org

Company type

Private

Founded year

2011

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

ScholarFund.org is a 501(c) non-profit web platform founded in 2011 that enables individual donors to create custom-named scholarships and helps middle and high school students find and apply for them, generating revenue via a 5-15% platform maintenance pledge on each scholarship.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Educational Scholarship Services

NAICS

Grantmaking Foundations (813211), Grantmaking and Giving Services (81321), Grantmaking and Giving Services (8132)

SIC

Services-Educational Services (8200)

akta.pro industry

PRIMARYEDADAHAC

Scholarship & Fellowship Foundations and Trusts

Education/Education Administration, Accreditation & Policy/Education Funding, Grants & Financial Aid Administration

SECONDARYBPAGAKAK

Education Grantmaking Foundations

Business & Public Services/Nonprofit, NGO & Social Services/Philanthropy, Foundations & Grantmaking

SECONDARYEDAIAOAH

Foundation/NGO & Philanthropic Scholarships

Education/International Education & Study Abroad/Scholarships, Funding & Financial Aid for International Study

Keywords

• Scholarship management platform
• Educational fundraising services
• Scholarship administration tools
• Student scholarship portal
• Donor scholarship services

Headquarters

HQ city

New York

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Personnel

Revenue model

1. Platform Maintenance Fee: ScholarFund.org generates revenue by asking donors who set up scholarships to pledge a percentage (usually 5-15%) of the scholarship amount to help maintain the platform and further ScholarFund.org's mission.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels4 records

Core offering

ScholarFund.org operates a non-profit web-based platform that enables educational donors to create and manage personally meaningful scholarships with custom criteria, while helping students find and apply for scholarships. The organization facilitates the full scholarship lifecycle from creation and application through review and award disbursement, supported by a community partnership network for outreach.

Product overview

ScholarFund.org is a non-profit scholarship management platform that enables donors to set up and manage personally meaningful scholarships. The core platform consists of a scholarship management dashboard for donors, an online application portal for students, and selection committee tools. The platform facilitates the entire scholarship lifecycle from creation through award disbursement, including customizable criteria, application review, and fund management options such as 529 College Savings Program portfolios.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• ScholarFund.org Platform An online non-profit platform enabling donors to set up and manage personally meaningful scholarships with custom criteria, while helping students find and apply for scholarships. Includes customizable scholarship pages, application forms, review tools, and donation processing for both direct support and crowd-sourced scholarships.

Named customers4 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Scale indicators2 records

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Bold.org: Bold.org is a scholarship platform that enables donors to fund and customize scholarships while students apply online — a near-direct competitor to ScholarFund.org's dual-sided model with stronger recent traction and a similar low-minimum donor experience.
• Going Merry: Going Merry runs a scholarship platform that aggregates scholarships and lets students apply to many with a single profile; it overlaps with ScholarFund.org on the student application side and on enabling local/community scholarship sponsorships.
• Scholly: Scholly is a mobile-first scholarship discovery and application platform. It competes with ScholarFund.org on the student-facing application experience, but like Fastweb does not focus on enabling individual donors to launch custom scholarships.
• Unigo: Unigo offers a scholarship database and matching service for students, comparable to ScholarFund.org's student-facing application portal. It does not provide donors with a self-serve scholarship creation workflow.
• Cappex: Cappex provides a scholarship search engine alongside college planning tools. It is a peer of ScholarFund.org in helping students discover and apply for scholarships, though it lacks the donor-facing scholarship creation layer.

Broad incumbents

• Fastweb: Fastweb is one of the largest U.S. scholarship search engines, owned by QuinStreet. It is comparable to ScholarFund.org as it connects students to scholarship opportunities, though it focuses on aggregating existing scholarships rather than enabling donors to create new custom ones.
• Scholarship America: Scholarship America is one of the largest U.S. nonprofits administering scholarship programs on behalf of corporations, foundations, and individuals. It is comparable to ScholarFund.org as a scholarship administration organization, though it operates at vastly greater scale and with established 501(c)(3) status.
• Scholarships.com: Scholarships.com is a long-standing scholarship database and matching service. It competes with ScholarFund.org on the student discovery side but does not offer a donor-facing scholarship creation and management workflow.
• College Board BigFuture: College Board's BigFuture program includes a large scholarship search and matching tool embedded within its college planning ecosystem. Comparable to ScholarFund.org as a destination for students seeking scholarships, though much larger and broader in scope.

Emerging players

• RaiseMe: RaiseMe pioneered micro-scholarships awarded by colleges for high school achievements. It is comparable as a platform reshaping how scholarships are created and distributed, though its primary sponsor is the college rather than an individual donor.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat2 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/scholarfund
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/scholarfund-org

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Scholarfund.org