Inside the $40K grant that's sending twelve girls to university

Every chapter sets aside a slice of its dues for the Impact Grant, and every quarter, members nominate the causes it should fund. This round, the Kampala and Nairobi chapters pooled their allocations behind a single proposal: full first-year tuition for twelve girls whose university admissions were confirmed, but whose funding wasn't.

The nominations came from inside the Collective — a member's cousin, a mentee's younger sister, a name passed along by a chapter lead who'd been keeping a list. No outside applications, no marketing campaign. Just women who already had a name in mind when the call went out.

"We didn't fund potential. We funded twelve specific acceptance letters that were about to expire unpaid."

Where the $40,000 went

Nine of the twelve are studying in-country; three are on partial scholarships elsewhere and used the grant to close the remaining gap. Each recipient is paired, informally, with a Collective member in a related field — not a formal mentorship program, just a name to call when registration gets confusing.

The fund disburses quarterly, and the vote is public within the Collective's internal channels — anyone can see where the money went and why. That transparency, more than the size of the fund, is what members cite when asked why they keep contributing.