The Western New York Impact Investment Fund is pleased to announce a $250,000 investment into Arbol, a higher education software company that is embarking on a national expansion.
This is the second time the Fund has invested in Arbol, following a $100,000 check in 2023 (link) that served as the lead investment into Arbol’s $850,000 pre-seed round. The Fund is once again serving as lead investor in the company’s current seed round.
Arbol is led by co-founders David Gonzalez and Favio Osorio (link), who based the company on their experience as first-generation Latino college students. Arbol helps universities improve enrollment, retention, and tuition revenue by streamlining student financial services with a platform that provides students with clarity and confidence, enabling them to navigate their financial journey with ease and success.
The Western New York Impact Investment Fund made investments into five different companies in 2024, its most active year since the Fund launched in 2017. The Fund is a pioneer in place-based social impact investing, only backing companies with commercial promise that are dedicated to improving the Western New York community.
“Arbol has made tremendous progress since we first invested in summer 2023, developing a great product, hiring talented team members and achieving exciting traction in the higher ed marketplace,” said Tom Quinn, WNY Impact Investment Fund CEO. “This rapid progress has moved the company even closer to its mission of keeping young adults in college and on track to graduate, and we’re proud to support the next phase of that journey with this new investment. Arbol is now faced with a major national opportunity to fundamentally change the way student financial services are delivered on campus.”
The U.S. higher education industry is struggling with declining enrollment and high dropout rates, with data showing that nearly 40% of first-time, fulltime freshmen do not complete bachelor’s degrees. One of the main culprits of this problem is the overwhelming complexity of the financial experience, which creates confusion, frustration and stress among students and ultimately leads to dropouts.
The complexity is an enormous challenge for institutions, which must spend far more energy and time recruiting new students than retaining current ones. The cycle makes places excessive strain on already overburdened support services.
Arbol addresses these challenges by simplifying the financial journey for students and institutions, providing clarity, confidence and personalized financial roadmaps from the day they step onto campus. This proactive approach helps institutions improve enrollment, retention and revenue management.
When the Fund first invested in summer 2023, Arbol had two pilot customers and has since expanded to eight colleges and universities of all sizes, including SUNY Buffalo State, SUNY Erie Community College, Keuka University, and UNC East Carolina. Arbol has delivered personalized financial plans to over 4,000 students nationwide. Students who use Arbol report a 50% reduction in financial stress and typically take at least one proactive action, such as securing additional aid, applying for a work-study job, or utilizing transportation assistance.
Arbol’s solution is effective across a spectrum of higher ed settings, and it is starting to find traction with larger universities that already have financial wellness centers. Arbol arms those centers with the tools to provide personalized financial guidance at scale. The company’s personalized financial plans help students understand their situations and make better decisions, while its platform gives college staff proactive tools that enable them to deliver high-quality financial wellness across their student body.
Founded in 2021, the Buffalo-based company plans to use the new round to bolster its engineering and customer success teams as it aims to significantly increase its customer count in the next two years. Arbol is aiming for significant penetration of the global higher education market, with an initial focus on target systems like SUNY and UNC, where it already has a foothold.
“Financing a college education is far more complex than most people realize, and it’s the root cause of the decade-long decline in college graduates,” said David Gonzalez, Arbol co-founder and CEO. “At Arbol, we’re stripping away the complexity and giving students the clarity they need to make empowered decisions. Students who use Arbol will graduate with less debt, creating new pathways to long-term economic mobility. This is how we transform the future of education.”
Arbol’s growth has been supported by local higher ed institutions, including Buffalo State University, where Arbol’s personalized financial plans were initially delivered to students in the Roar To Success program. That activity led to a meaningful increase in persistence rates within the program, showing that students stay in school when they have clarity around their financial situation and concrete steps to improve it.
Buffalo State expanded its relationship with Arbol heading into the fall 2024 semester, where all new incoming students will be delivered Arbol plans at summer orientation.
“Arbol’s plug-and-play financial plans give students clarity on where they stand financially and allow Buffalo State to intervene when they have urgent gaps,” Jim Finnerty, vice president of institutional advancement and president of the Buffalo State Foundation said. “This approach is keeping more students in school and driving toward their long-term goals.”
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