Help me fund this scholarship for misfit kids at my rural high school!
It helps graduates be their authentic selves and start a life that’s right for them
This year I started something that’s been on my bucket list for a while: I’m offering a scholarship for graduates of my local public high school!
This school is in my tiny Wisconsin town of 780 people, in a county whose median income is about $65,000 — 17% below the national average and 14% below our state average. 50% of students come from economically disadvantaged households. We’re in a deep red district politically.1
I grew up in a place like this in rural Wisconsin, and I know what it’s like to a be a teenage weirdo in a small, working class town. I know what it’s like to want to get out and find your people, an affirming community, a place where the things you love are celebrated, a place where the work you dream of doing isn’t dismissed as an impossibility.
And I know how hard it is to get from here to anywhere else.
As a child-free adult (and a misfit in my own right) in this town, the mark I want my presence to make is to help those kids be seen, celebrated and validated. The theater kids. The band geeks. The ones who read through class. The kids who are better than their teachers at math by the fourth grade. The queer kids. The children of immigrants. The neurodivergent kids.
One tiny way I can do that is to offer this scholarship. And what I’m really excited about is the scholarship doesn’t require recipients to enroll in college after high school. It’s one of just two scholarships in this community that doesn’t carry that prerequisite. This money is explicitly available to use however a graduate wants to use it after high school — to help with moving expenses, certifications, travel, housing, work or business expenses, everyday needs or anything else. It’s there to offer a tiny leg up that can be hard to come by when you’re trying to forge your own path in a community where “different” is an insult.
I’m offering at least one scholarship for $1,000 for any public or home-schooled graduate in this school district. The first scholarship will be awarded in May 2026 at the end of this academic year, and I hope to make it an annual award.
I’d love your help making this happen!
I’ve already set aside $1,000 of Healthy Rich proceeds to guarantee this year’s scholarship. I’d love your help building the fund to ensure it’s available for future years and maybe even choose multiple recipients some years.
If you want to help, you can donate money right here.
100% of the money collected through that link goes into the scholarship fund; none of it stays in my business, and there are no costs to administering this scholarship (except Stripe fees, which I’m covering). I’ll keep you all up to date on the progress of the scholarship fund and the awards that go out in May.
A few more details about how I’m awarding this scholarship and how I’m thinking about making it useful and accessible to the students I want to reach…
In addition to not considering plans for higher education, selection does not consider GPA, academic achievement, ACT scores or extracurricular involvement. Most scholarships have requirements for these criteria — even those that exist to help marginalized students or those from low-income families, who are well known to have a disadvantage in these areas. That made me mad, so I made my scholarship different.
Selection doesn’t consider family income or other markers of financial need. I struggled with this decision, but here’s why: A lot of queer and other misfit kids get cut off from family financial support when they come out or pursue any kind of authenticity. Maybe this money could be the safety net they need to make that choice. (The question of “family income” is also complicated for kids in foster care or other alloparent situation.)
Applications can be submitted in English or Spanish, because we have a large population of Spanish-speaking immigrant families in this area.
Applicants can submit their answers to short essay questions in written, audio or video form, to make it accessible for students who don’t feel confident expressing themselves in writing (also because of the multi-media creativity of Gen Z and Alpha!).
Money will go directly to the recipient once they’re at least 18 years old — so it can’t be intercepted by parents or guardians.
Selection is solely based on answers to essay questions, which ask about a time the student felt like they didn’t fit in, their post-graduation plans and how they’d use the money.
I originally conceived of this scholarship explicitly for LGBTQ+ graduates, but I broadened the criteria to anyone who’s ever been told they’re “different” to avoid making applicants out themselves to apply. (I was also a queer kid in a small town who didn’t know I was queer until my early 20s, so I want to reach those folks, too!)
Scholarship funds that are used for anything other than qualified education expenses are taxable for the recipient, and — because I’m a financial educator :) — I’ll include resources with that information when I make the award.
There’s no nonprofit here, so your donations aren’t tax-deductible (and Healthy Rich doesn’t get any tax break, either). Because it’s small scale and hyper-local, this is strictly a mutual aid effort.
Want to start something like this in your town?
It was surprisingly simple to set up this scholarship and connect with the local high school. I’d love to see scholarships like this in communities all over the country, but I’m not equipped for (or interested in) managing something that complex.
And, anyway, this works better as a localized effort.
If you live in a rural area and want to set up a “misfits” scholarship of your own, reach out! I’d be happy to offer anything I can to help you get it going. If a few of us are doing it, maybe we can work together on fundraising and fund management, too! Reply to this email if you want to chat.
Do you have other questions?
This is the first mutual aid effort I’ve spearheaded, so I don’t know what I don’t know. Before you contribute, do you have questions I haven’t answered? Any issues it looks like I haven’t thought of? Have you learned lessons from running similar efforts? Share them in the comments or reply to this email!
I’m not naming it because it’s so tiny. Naming the town or the school on the internet feels like giving exposure directly to people who absolutely don’t want it. The stats here come from a U.S. News & World Report profile of the school district and a Census Reporter overview of the county.