Dive Brief:

• Students at a small Texas college started a "crowd-funding" web page to help keep their school open.
• The goal was to raise $250,000 for The College of Saints John Fisher & Thomas More; the amount raised now stands at nearly $300,000.
• The small, Catholic liberal arts school charges $5,000 per semester and didn't want to raise tuition after funding sources it had lined up fell through.

Dive Insight:

While crowd-funding has been used for everything from movies to wristwatches, using it to fund a college might be a first. It's hard to argue with results, but hopefully the college will put in place more stable funding for the long term.