Undebted envisions a new way to help people in the United States who are being crushed by their student loans. Our goal is to create a “scholarship” program for people after they’re out of college and in their careers.
Since existing scholarships help students before and during college, why not after?
It makes absolutely no sense that people can’t receive this kind of assistance after college when we’re facing a national financial crisis of this level.
What We Are
Undebted is a non-partisan social enterprise. From Wikipedia’s page on the topic:
A social enterprise is an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in financial, social and environmental well-being. . . . structured as a for-profit or non-profit.
Essentially, the idea is to operate with the heart of a non-profit but the mindset of a business. In our case, we will fund our efforts primarily through income versus donations. And even though we are technically a for-profit venture, we value our purpose as much as our profit.
Some great examples of for-profit social enterprises are Kickstarter, TOMS Shoes, Patagonia, Warby Parker, and Bombas. All of these companies sell products or provide services to support a larger goal of social improvement.
We’re proud to be part of the relatively new social entrepreneurship movement, sometimes referred to as “conscious capitalism.” Our world has many problems that the business, government, and non-profit sectors have struggled to solve — and social entrepreneurs are finding innovative ways to approach these from a new perspective.
We hope to do the same.
How We Started
In 2010, Undebted founder Andrew Chapman was trying to recover from the Great Recession. He watched his student loans — in necessary forbearance — balloon to beyond what he originally owed. In the years that followed, he kept hearing more and more stories of other people falling into big holes with their college debts.
And the stories are only worse today.
These people can’t afford or qualify to buy homes. . . they can’t take on ideal jobs. . . they can’t start families. . . they can’t put money into their savings. . . they can’t take the leap to start businesses to try to get ahead. . . they can’t contribute their best to their communities and society.
For them, college’s financial promise had turned into a financial prison.
Knowing he was far from alone — and seeing the national numbers only going up — Andrew began exploring ways to address the student-debt crisis. Being an entrepreneur at heart and throughout his career, he figured there must be some idea that hadn’t been tried.
And that’s when Andrew came up with the concept of “scholarships” for people who were already out of college.
Undebted was born.