The Story of An 18 year Old Freshmen Who funded his education by asking 2.8 million People for One Penny

In this day and age, there are many people that fund various things through crowd sourcing. They may need help for a surgery or to create a new product so they simply create a page detailing the project and ask viewers to donate what they can to the fund through online donations. Sites like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are the most well-known websites that have started this trend of funding products through the internet. Typically the people that fund the campaign are given a range of different rewards at different price points.

But what about in the years before the advent of the internet? How did people source funds for special project? Well one industrious student at the University of Illinois thought he could either ask people a few people for a lot of money or ask a lot of people for small amounts of money. As it turns out, the later happens to be the more successful way of doing things.

Back in 1987, Michael Hayes was a freshman science student at the University of Illinois. Faced with mounting tuition bills, he endeavored to reach a vast audience and make one simple request: donate one penny to his college fund. Sure he could have gotten a job, but if many people contributed he would be able to pay for his education.

But how was he to reach enough people to cover his $28,000 tuition bill? He approached veteran Chicago Tribune reporter, Bob Greene. He asked Bob how many readers he thought he had. Bob was not entirely sure but agreed with Mike that he had millions of readers across the country. He then told Bob of his plan and it intrigued the columnist as he never heard anything quite like it before. After only a couple of months, the “Many Pennies for Mike” fund was established. Mike asked that any reader who was reading about the plan to simply look around their environment, pick up one penny and send it to the paper for his college expenses. Okay, seems interesting enough, but did it work?

So many readers were impressed with the idea that not only did they send in pennies, some sent in nickels, dimes and quarters as well as checks of various amounts. Very quickly, Mike was seeing the fund grow and grow and it seemed possible that he would reach his goal. Donations were received from every state in the country as well as Mexico and Canada. And yes, he did get the $28,000 he needed to pay his college tuition. $28,000 is a lot of money today and especially so in the 1980’s, but a penny is not and almost everyone has a penny to give.

Pretty smart kid, right? So what ever happened to Mike Hayes? He went on to earn his degree in food science and was always appreciative of the simple generosity of people around the country that helped him get his degree. He actually received $29,000 and the extra $1,000 went to a deserving freshman who needed a little bit of help with his tuition for college. Mike made the most out of what he had, and his plan proved to be extremely successful. You could definitely say that Mike was paying it forward.

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