By Demetria Irwin
Raymar and Robert Hampshire, Founders of SponsorChange
On graduation day, when students cross the stage in stately robes and wide grins, most are handed not only a degree, but tens of thousands of dollars of debt. According to FinAid.org, two-thirds of students who graduate from a four-year college leave with loan debt — $27,803 worth of it on average. SponsorChange.org, a Pittsburgh-based non-profit started by two brothers, has a surprising and innovative way to help graduates pay down debt: volunteering.
SponsorChange.org matches nonprofit organizations with college-educated professionals who have a passion for community service and an armload of loans to repay. The volunteers fulfill a pre-determined number of hours required to complete the nonprofit’s project; their work is rewarded by sponsors who pay off a portion of their loans. The sponsors essentially provide money that enables community service, hence sponsoring change.
The Team
Raymar Hampshire, the 27-year-old CEO and co-founder of SponsorChange.org, explained how the idea developed. “My brother (Robert Hampshire) is a professor and a lot of his research involves peer to peer lending. We were talking about organizations like Prosper and Lending Club and trying to figure out how to put community service into that equation,” said Hampshire. “At the time, this was in 2007, there were a lot of people defaulting on student loans. Who better to utilize a service like that than college-educated professionals? Interestingly enough, we were driving through Tennessee, the volunteer state, when we came up with the basic idea for SponsorChange.org.”
SponsorChange MLK Day of Service
While conducting research, Hampshire came across the work of Jesse Rothstein whose study of Princeton graduates found that the anticipation of student loan debt impacted the majors and career choices of the students. Those free of the burden of student loans tended to go for riskier or lower-paying careers such as entrepreneurship or social work. Hampshire seeks to offer that freedom to his organization’s participants.
The group is in its early stages. The first volunteers started in the spring of 2009. With only $44,000 invested so far, the SponsorChange.org is fueled more by energy, ambition and resourcefulness than dollars. None of the seven staffers draws a salary. Hampshire, who is a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, says he puts in about 60 hours of work a week.
The director of marketing, Shawn Agyeman, manages to work six to seven hours a day on the organization’s behalf, while also maintaining his part-time job as a life skills instructor for kids. Agyeman, a former program participant, is the Hampshire brothers’ right hand man. He is the person who spends the most time in the office and though he does not have a salary now, he plans to receive a portion of future revenue from ad sales.
“I treat this like a full-time job,” said Agyeman. “The more time you invest in doing something, the better you become at doing that thing. Being here has taught me a lot of things. I’ve learned about search engine optimization, public relations and just being resourceful. I arranged for us to get donated office space and I got us a mention in Businessweek. It’s an interesting job and we have an awesome staff.”
For Hampshire to make this work while not drawing a salary he’s had to rely on savings. “I used to work at Merrill Lynch and more recently I took a job as a census enumerator, so I managed to save some money,” he said. “Plus, I’m a frugal guy. I don’t own a car. I take the bus everywhere. In Pittsburgh there’s no stigma to taking the bus. Everybody rides it.”
The Program
So far, the organization has matched 14 volunteers with nonprofit organizations. Together these individuals have completed a total of 400 service hours, earning nearly $8,000 in loan payments. Seventeen organizations in the Pittsburgh area have signed onto the program including Toys for Tots, Habitat for Humanity and InRoads.
One thing SponsorChange.org prides itself on is offering more than the typical volunteer opportunity. “I just got a request for a choreographer and a drum teacher. Things like that are very unique. You wouldn’t necessarily think that you could volunteer and do something like that. We match people’s existing passions with the organizations’ needs. A lot of young professionals are civic-minded. This is a really cool way to give back and benefit from something they you would do anyway,” explained Agyeman, who has been involved with volunteer organizations for most of his life.
Another believer in community service is Sheena Hancock, a 28-year-old administrator at the University of Pittsburgh. “I got an email about SponsorChange.org last year and decided to be a part of the program,”
she said. “When I was growing up my family did not have a lot of money and there were times when I was dependent upon donations for basic things like clothes and food. My parents always made a point to tell me where things came from and to be grateful and to give back whenever I could. I’ve been volunteering my whole life.”
Hancock volunteered at the Wilkinsburg Boys and Girls Club from September to December 2009 for three hours each week. Her work as a life skills coach was so valuable that the staff asked her to stay on beyond the end of the project. Hancock already had a full-time job, but instead of turning down the opportunity, she convinced her sorors from Sigma Gamma Rho to volunteer on a regular basis.
Though still involved with SponsorChange.org and very grateful for the money put toward her debt, Hancock does not plan to return to her initial relationship with the organization. “I believe in sharing the wealth. I already got my portion. It would be unfair to hog it all,” said Hancock who is working on her second bachelor’s degree with plans for a master’s degree. “You want somebody to be able to experience the same thing you did. Whenever Raymar or Shawn call me to do something, I’m here, but I would not go back to volunteering for the student loan payments.”
According to Hampshire, the average student loan debt of their participants is $35,000. That debt is chipped away by sponsors who donate money that is then distributed according to the number of volunteer completed. Each hour is worth between $10 and $20, depending on the scope of the project. Sponsors — there have been 10 so far — range from Hampshire family members to organizational sponsors. “The Sprout Fund has been our largest sponsor so far. They gave us $3,000. The Sprout Fund gives money to small, riskier projects to get them off the ground,” explained Hampshire.
The sponsors get to watch their money at work via a weekly blog. Volunteers are required to create a blog post for each day that they volunteer. For most participants, this is two days a week. The blog posts are typically short—perhaps two or three paragraphs — and include photographs from that day’s activities.
The Future
Right now, SponsorChange.org only operates in Pittsburgh, but Hampshire hopes to change that. “I definitely want to see us expand. Ultimately, this will be a sustainable career for me. If we can secure $200,000 in funding this year, we’ll be expanding to the next city within two years. We are actively seeking more sponsors,” explained Hampshire who is a Lima, Ohio native and someone who believes Pittsburgh is vastly underrated.
With a healthy mix of academic learning and professional experience, along with the expertise of an impressive six-member advisory board, SponsorChange.org is long on plans, analysis and projections. In five years, they hope to have 27,727 volunteers and 83,000 individual sponsors.
As for his own student loans, Hampshire has plans for them too, “I haven’t used the program for my own benefit yet. Eventually, I’d like to do that.”
