When Saroop Bharwani and Shachin Ghelani started looking for grad school funding, they came across an unexpected problem. It wasn’t that grants were hard to come by—it was that many poorly-advertised privately funded scholarships were going completely overlooked.

“Millions of dollars worth of bursaries and grants go unclaimed every year,” said Ghelani. She blamed Ontario’s grant application processes for the issue. “As we dug deeper, we found that students were frustrated with the current ways of applying.”

She and Bharwani found the typical application process increasingly frustrating. “The both of us are a bit more creative, a bit more visually expressive and we found that there were no real programs out there that catered to our needs,” Ghelani said.

The two began discussing the concept of using videos or images as grant applications, instead of the familiar forms and micro-essays. They liked the idea so much they decided to quit their jobs and abandon grad school plans in order to launch their own granting service. Established in September 2006, the online funding agency Ogrant gets financial backing from corporate sponsorships.

Bethany Horne was the first student to ever get money from Ogrant. “I applied because I, like many students, am poor,” said Horne. She noticed that fewer than 40 people had applied for a thousand-dollar grant, decided to give it a try, and won. “It was a huge relief,” she added.

GPA is not considered on an Ogrant application. Neither is household income or estimated annual expenses. To apply for an award from Ogrant, a student creates a video or image explaining why he or she deserves the money. Then other students vote for their favourite submissions, and these are passed on to the sponsors for the final selection. Many winning applications get only a few hundred votes.

Applying for an Ogrant sounds like a no-brainer. But is it fair to award education grants to students based on the outcome of what amounts to a popularity contest?

“I think the popular voting system could be improved upon by a higher membership to the site,” said Horne. “As it stands, it is very easy to get your 300 Facebook friends to vote for you, and win, because you have more friends than someone else. That is not fair.” [The recent voting round had way more turnout than my application did: because more people are getting into it.]

Popular voting and profile commenting are not the only aspects of evaluation. This is the “community support phase” and constitutes about 30 per cent of overall criteria. Yet, a corporate Ogrant sponsors only reviews the most supported applicants.

Once it’s been posted to the website, other students vote for who they think should win. “We still want to show that some kind of intellectual ability or talent is present.”

According to the Ogrant website, its main purpose is to encourage businesses and wealthy individuals to provide financial aid to students. Alterna Savings is one of the companies taking part in the initiative, providing three Ogrants totaling $6,000. Ghelani declined to comment on Ogrant’s total budget.

Judging by the website’s overall activity, competition is by no means fierce. Only one student to date, Sarah Hyland, has applied for the Alterna grants.