We keep forgetting to post about this: Prosper.com

Have you ever checked them out? Prosper.com is sort of a cross between Myspace and eBay.

It works like a miniature private equity fund. If you're a borrower, you set up an account, describe why you're looking to borrow money, and post your offer to the Prosper.com community. If you're a lender, you look thru all the borrowers profiles (both personal and credit), and make pledges for an amount to the borrower request. It seems that a $10,000 loan could have dozens of lenders supplying the capital. Once the loan request amount is met in terms of pledges, the Prosper.com goes out and executes a "capital call" (like private equity companies sometimes do) and the loan funds. The borrower makes one payment to Prosper.com, who in turn divvies up the P&I payments to the various lenders. Prosper.com probably does a better job of explaining how it works, so check them out.

But it seems that some folks use Prosper.com as a viable source of capital to finance a college education. Again, we've just sort of Googled around, but check it out. Let us know if you've had an experience with Prosper as an education finance source.