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NewsvineStanford students are turning gumballs into cash for the working poor.
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The Gumball Challenge is simple: loan $27 and 27 gumballs to student teams on college campuses and let them compete to find the most creative, imaginative way to use those materials to generate revenue for their cause.
Founded in February by a group of students for Stanford’s first annual Entrepreneurship Week, Gumball Capital began with just $30 in Post-its, which it used to solicit more than $4,000 over three days from individual student donations.
Now, Gumball Capital is broadening its horizons, incorporating students at Yale, St. Olaf College, The University of the South and UC Berkeley. On Nov. 27, teams from these schools will join Stanford in participating in the first annual Gumball Challenge Week.
While money from all competitions will go to charitable causes, Gumball Capital expects different results from every school.
At Yale, Gumball members have gone local, lending money already raised to domestic borrowers mostly in the New Haven area.
University of the South Gumball members have looked around the world, forming a partnership with microlender Grameen Bank to send children of poor Bangladeshi borrowers to school.
“Each campus will facilitate its own competition,” said Gumball Director Kalvin Wang ‘08, “We expect the look and feel of the competition to be different at different schools.”
Wang and Outreach Director Sophia Tu ‘08 said that individual teams decide where to send the money they raise. The important part, they said, is combining a charitable cause with an entrepreneurial spirit.
They’re entrepreneurs helping out entrepreneurs: the associated Gumball Fund works through microfinance, the practice of lending small sums to small-scale enterprisers usually overlooked by mainstream multinational banks: farmers, street vendors and small business owners.
Why not traditional charity?
“It’s the idea of sustainability, not a handout,” said Tu. “We provide people with the resources needed to jumpstart their ideas. Microfinance is a global development strategy. It’s dignified, unimposing, and encourages people to take initiative.”
The Gumball Fund makes loans through a non-profit organization called Kiva that connects individual borrowers from around the world with small-scale lenders.
“Kiva is like the eBay of the microfinance world,” said Wang, “There’s nobody else quite like them who provides a consumer-level experience that allows lenders to see and read the stories of the people they’re lending to.”
“Loans are made in $25 increments,” noted Tu, “so it’s very approachable for college students and you are actually able to see your impact.”
On some campuses, the lending has already started. The Yale Gumball branch has made direct microloans to local residents like clown “Uncle Chip” Murphy, who used his loan to buy a cotton candy and popcorn machine.
“It began as a one-week project,” said Wang, “but we’ve transitioned to something bigger.”