A mention from John Oliver gave one scholarship fund a windfall


Who needs buckets of ice when there's John Oliver? After the Last Week Tonight host mentioned three different scholarships on Sunday night's show, one has stepped forward to announce it raised $25,000 in just two days.
Oliver blasted the Miss America Pageant and the creative math the organization uses in order to make the claim that it's the "world's largest provider of scholarships for women." After Oliver punched several holes in this theory, he named three less-affluent female-only scholarships that probably benefit women more, distributed by the Society of Women Engineers, the Patsy Mink Educational Foundation, and the Jeannette Rankin Women's Scholarship Fund.
A spokesperson for the Society of Women Engineers told the Chicago Tribune on Tuesday that over the course of two days, the organization received $25,000, or close to 15 percent of its expected annual donations. That money — courtesy of the "John Oliver Bounce" — will go toward scholarships for women pursuing engineering careers.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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