in About Skolafund, How Can I Fund?

Why sponsor via Kitafund.com/Skolafund.com?

Dear Sponsors & Students,

Once in a while we receive emails or messages telling us that the 8% fee Kitafund/Skolafund charges is unnecessary and the sponsor would rather sponsor the student directly into the student’s bank account.

In this post I will answer the following questions:

  1. Why does Kitafund/Skolafund charge the 8% fee (5%+3%)?
  2. Why it is better to sponsor via Kitafund/Skolafund vs directly transferring to the beneficiary?

Answering question (1), we will first explain what the charges are for.

5% Kitafund/Skolafund Service Fee– The money that we get will be collected and used to develop and scale this platform. This 5% fee will be used by Skolafund to cover its operational costs. We ensure that the platform is working, checks and verifies every campaign application and also manage payouts to minimise chances of fund abuse. These are only some of the work put in by the team to make these platforms work.

3% Payment Fees – This will be used to pay bank and payment gateway fees (MOL Pay and Paypal) charges for each transaction made. To make sponsorships using Maybank2U, CIMB Clicks, RHB Now and other methods on Kitafund/Skolafund, there are charges that our team needs to pay to the payment gateway providers.  This 3% will be used to pay for this transaction and technical costs.

Answering question (2) Why it’s better to sponsor via Kitafund/Skolafund vs directly transferring the money to the beneficiary?

a. Direct bank transfer to the beneficiary means that there’s minimal transparency. The other sponsors won’t know how much the student has raised and how much more fund is needed. When you do it via a crowdfunding platform, the others get to know these info and the sponsors can make a better decision as to how much funds to give to the student.

b. Minimise chances of fund abuse. As a platform, we help sponsors ensure the fund goes to its rightful destination and this is part of maintaining transparency between the students and sponsors.

For Skolafund.com, we also have a publicly available transparency sheet where you can see the students funded on Skolafund and the receipts which shows our payouts made to universities (for the fees) and to the students (for stipends). You can access it here.

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  1. Thanks for explanation. before this i also agree with others to donate through personal account not third party.after i read this,i found this is true.need somebody to manage the donation.