Cog Mission adventure · 2 years
NextJawn
Scholarship and opportunity discovery — fewer gates, more transparency for families.
Scholarships and educational opportunities stay hidden when information is scattered and unequal. Families asked for fewer gates and more transparency — so we are building discovery paths that honor generosity, not bureaucracy.
NextJawn is evolving with family feedback — discovery paths that respect how parents actually search, ask questions, and celebrate wins.
1 · Listen
Every project starts with listening.
Families, counselors, and educators kept describing the same problem: scholarships were hiding in plain sight. Opportunities were scattered across PDFs, buried in commencement programs, tucked inside local foundation websites, or shared through word of mouth. Finding them often depended on knowing the right person instead of asking the right question.
Instead of assuming we knew the answer, we handed a whiteboard to our fresh-out-of-high-school fall interns and gave them a challenge: "Build the scholarship site you want to use." We listened as they questioned every assumption and imagined what discovery could feel like if it started with curiosity instead of bureaucracy.
2 · Learn
Where is the Love?
We learned that every scholarship begins with a story. Sometimes it's an educator giving back. Sometimes it's a local business investing in future talent. Sometimes it's a family turning love, gratitude, or grief into an opportunity for someone they've never met. Those stories matter just as much as the dollars attached to them — and we discovered dozens of scholarships created in memory of children who never had the chance to wear their caps and gowns before earning their wings.
...Who is cutting onions?
Those wet eyes reminded us that generosity isn't just about funding an education. Sometimes it's how love keeps showing up long after someone is gone. Scholarships aren't just financial aid. They're legacy.
Our web scraping included commencement brochures, scholarship announcements, education foundations, award ceremonies, and one question that kept resurfacing: Who is behind the generosity?
3 · Build
NextJawn is our attempt to honor both the opportunity and the story behind it.
We're building discovery paths that reflect how families actually search — not how software assumes they should. Every feature has one purpose: reduce confusion, remove unnecessary steps, and help the right opportunity find the right student.
Today the project is being reviewed with two local school districts. Between the summer conversations, the whiteboard sketches, and yes, probably a few margaritas and piña coladas, we'll keep refining what we've learned before expanding to fifteen Delaware County school districts this fall.
Pick the door that sounds like you — each path on NextJawn is built for how donors, counselors, and students actually show up.
I'm a Philanthropist
Interested in preserving legacy? Or tasked with administration of a scholarship as a side quest? We replace bureaucracy with generosity.
I'm a Guide (counselor)
Connect students to real money — fewer forms, clearer paths, and less guesswork for the families you serve. Plus one really nice button that makes everything reset for the next year.
I'm a Dreamer (student)
Discover scholarship opportunities without the insider tip — learn what is out there and how to reach it.
4 · Measure
Our scoreboard is intentionally simple.
Can a family discover a real scholarship without needing an insider tip? Can a counselor connect a student to an opportunity in minutes instead of hours? Can generosity reach the people it was intended to help?
We don't celebrate page views or account signups. We celebrate clarity. Every scholarship discovered, every application submitted, and every family who says, "I didn't know this existed," tells us we're moving in the right direction.
5 · Improve
We expect NextJawn to keep changing because families keep teaching us.
Their feedback — not our roadmap — decides what happens next. If a discovery path still feels confusing, we simplify it. If something creates more work than opportunity, we rethink it. Progress isn't measured by how many features we ship but by how much easier we make the journey.