Life List: Help someone through college.

Thanks to Rivet & Sway for sponsoring this post, supplying the resources to do something nice, and being so cool to work with.

What I Did

I mentioned last week that I got my first pair of glasses when I was in college. What I didn’t mention is that my childhood before that point was kind of rough. A bad situation became untenable a few months before I was set to leave for school, and nearby relatives took me in so I could attend high school graduation with my class. Still, I had to reassess my plans.

No one in my immediate family had graduated from college, and most of my extended family hadn’t either. Though I always knew I would get a degree, now I had no idea how I would pay for it. I delayed my college acceptance, switched to a less expensive school, and applied for jobs, grants, loans, and credit cards. The combination got me through, along with help from an incredibly generous family friend who let me stay with her for a couple of years. Still, there were plenty of tears and sleepless nights over money.

What I’m Doing

When I think of that time, I worry for kids trying to pull themselves up. Education is the most straightforward way to improve your situation, and it scares me how daunting tuition can be for a kid with no money.

As part of their “Find Your Joy” campaign on Go Mighty, Rivet & Sway offered to fund an item on my Life List. I thought helping someone through college would be cool in partnership with an eyewear company. We support intellect! We are pro-nerdiness! We encourage our offspring to seek mates who exhibit global curiosity! And so forth.

So we decided to donate $1,000 to ScholarMatch, which is like a Kickstarter for college tuition. They use a crowdfunding model to pair you with a student who matches your criteria for support.

I’m hoping that together we can add another $1,200 to the Rivet & Sway advertising dollars, because ScholarMatch says it costs $1,100 to put a kid through one year of a two-year college. ScholarMatch also has a $50,000 tuition gap they need to fund before August so all of their students can afford to attend school in the Fall. They’ve raised about $38,000 so far.

What You Can Do

If you’d like to help, will you please:

1. Donate to ScholarMatch.

Choose the criteria for the student you’d like to support, and use PayPal or a credit card to make a donation here. Please leave a comment telling us how much you donated, so we know when to celebrate. Honor system, so you can be anonymous if you prefer.

2. Donate your time, or lend your megaphone.

If you make something or sell your services, and are willing to donate over 10 percent of your proceeds over the next three weeks, please leave a comment with a link to your site and the percentage you’re willing to donate. I’ll do a roundup of vendors early next week.

If you have a blog or are active on Facebook or Twitter and can help rally friends to chip in, that would be awesome.

3. Support Rivet & Sway’s decision to spend ad dollars this way.

If you’d like to see more of this type of campaign, let Rivet & Sway know. You can do that by entering the giveaway, for yourself or a geeky pal. You can also just visit the site and have a look around, to say, “Hey, thanks for not blowing that $1,000 on brochures.”

Thanks, guys. I’m excited to kickstart summer by checking this one off together.