Salute4vets funds education for veterans

Over 100 veterans will soon have the opportunity to receive a free USC education thanks to a new program created by the  School of Social Work

Salute4Vets, which launched on Feb. 11, will provide free education to 120 veterans who qualify for the post-9/11 GI Bill Yellow Ribbon scholarship. These scholarships are provided to allow veterans to come to USC to receive a free master’s degree in social work with a military specialization.

The program is funded between the scholarship initiative itself and the funds offered by the Yellow Ribbon scholarship from the veterans administration. The remaining funds for this program will be raised by donations. The program’s motto reads, “Helping one veteran helps 100 more.”

The initiators have created a website, salute4vets.org, that features a donations component. The website also uses social media as a major facet of their marketing.

Individuals can take a selfie of themselves saluting and then post it on social networks using the hashtag “#salute4vets.”

“We’ve taken a very innovative approach to fundraising, and we are doing it through crowdfunding,” said John Dumbacher, head of corporate partnerships for the School of Social Work. “The crowdfunding campaign goes until Aug. 1, and right now we have already funded one veteran scholarship. We hope to raise 2.6 million dollars, so that by August we will have funded 120 scholarships.”

Dumbacher got the idea of launching Salute4Vets while talking to students and graduates of the school of social work who were veterans, where Dumbacher came across stories of those students helping other veterans.

“Those students are helping on average about 100 veterans each year. We have 1,176 graduates of the program today, and that means over a 100,000 veterans were helped last year. So we started gathering the best of those stories and then [felt] we need to tell this [story] because it’s amazing and unique,” Dumbacher said.

This program is aimed at helping veterans make the transition back into their civilian life and providing psychological and social support.

“Veterans need a new challenge, and they need a way to focus and help other people. Many of them have found great success in understanding ways to work best with other veterans,” Dumbacher said. “Many of these stories really revolve around the fact that by helping other veterans they really help themselves as well.”

Veterans and former graduates of the School of Social Work Gena Truitt, Kristen Kavanaugh and Nathan Graeser have been working with veterans, along with current student Michael Branch.

Dumbacher and his team put this campaign together with the help and support of students, faculty members such as Dean of School of Social Work Marilyn Flynn, and top social media and public service announcement agencies like Sprinklr and Connect360.

Dumbacher plans on advertising on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to spread the word over social media. The program is also creating a public service announcement directed to 800 TV stations and over 1,500 radio stations to raise awareness for the organization’s work.

“What we hope to accomplish in this campaign is to show veterans that we really do value their service,” Dumbacher said.