Fraternity raises $18,000 for transgender member’s surgery (VIDEO)
Donnie Collins will now be able to get his gender-reassignment surgery thanks to his fraternity brothers.
A Boston fraternity raised $18,000 for a transgender member's sex-change surgery after his health plan and insurance refused to pay.
According to CNN, 20-year-old Donnie Collins is an Emerson College sophomore and a brother of Phi Alpha Tau, the oldest communicative arts fraternity in the United States. Collins was born female and came out as transgender at age 17 while living in an all-girls dormitory at a boarding school.
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Collins has since started planning to get gender-reassignment surgery, reported USA Today. The procedure involves a double mastectomy and male chest contouring, and costs $8,100.
Phi Alpha Tau's goal was originally $2,000, but the fund has surpassed $18,000 since it was posted on crowd-funding site IndieGoGo on Feb. 9, according to NBC News.
The fraternity brothers raising the money for Collins's surgery noted on their IndieGoGo page that all excess proceeds will be donated to the Jim Collins Foundation, which provides financial assistance to transgender people for gender-reassignment surgery.