Donate

I want to donate!

Great, thank you!

• Monthly donations: Please fill out the Google Form below with your PayPal/Venmo account and your preferred dollar amount. Then we will send you a monthly request, which you can always accept or deny.
• One-time donations: Please donate via PayPal to the email account paypal@fulbrightaustriamutualaid.com, with the memo “Fulbright Austria Mutual Aid” and transaction type “Friends & Family.”

How does it work, briefly?

You donate to us, and we split the money evenly among current grantees (lowest-paid grants first, then higher-paid ones). Every grantee who wants their share is eligible; there are no means tests, no applications, and no questions. We use donations to cover the (minimal) fees for currency conversion and bank transfers, but we take zero cut for ourselves. We are doing this because we care.

This is not a charity, and your donation is not tax-deductible. It is a personal gift, like crowdfunding, but hosted on our own website to minimize fees. It is also not officially affiliated with the Fulbright program; we are just Fulbright alumni who want to make sure everyone can participate.

How does it work, in more detail?

We will get in touch with 2022-2023 grantees as soon as possible, explain who we are, and ask those interested to opt in, just once for the duration of their grant. We do not ask them any financial questions, although we do hope that grantees with very significant external support (like PhD students receiving their home-university salary while in Austria) consider declining.

We are working on setting up dedicated bank accounts for the program. In the meantime, we can only accept donations through PayPal and Venmo. We move donations through our personal American and Austrian bank accounts to the personal bank accounts of grantees.

Donations are split in the following way. Fulbright US Student grants come in three sizes: Research grantees on the grants called Open Study/Research and Fulbright-Marshall make 1,150€ per month. There is a single Fulbright IFK Junior Fellow, a research grantee who makes 1,200€ per month. Folks with Combined or Community-Based Combined grants make 1,307€ per month.

In any given month, donations are split among grantees who opted in as follows: The earliest donations are split evenly among those making 1,150€. If donations bring those folks up to 1,200€, further donations are split between that group and the grantee making 1,200€. If even further donations bring this bigger group up to 1,307€, any donations after that are split evenly among everybody. The next month, the count resets.

To minimize fees, which are paid per transfer, transfers are only made when the pot is big enough to send 20€ to every grantee in the current disbursement pool (following the order above).

Questions/suggestions/complaints?

Please email support@fulbrightaustriamutualaid.com. Thanks for your time.