-
When do you disburse your scholarship funds? Timing of scholarship fund disbursement
Hello everyone! When do you send scholarship checks to your recipients' school/university/college etc? Is it possible to send funds in May? In the past I have disbursed the funds for new recipients and renewal recipients in August/September. However, my boss was wondering if we could disburse the funds right after making…
-
Program Scholarships
We have a new scholarship opening that is funded by several smaller scholarships. Students will apply to the one "master" scholarship and the financial awards will come from the individual funds. Wondering if anyone has had this situation and figured out how to simplify/streamline the award process in SLM and CSuite. Thank…
-
Is NSPA membership worth it?
Hi! Is anyone a member of the National Scholarship Providers Association (NSPA) and thinks it is worth it as a scholarship provider? If yes, what would you say are the main benefits? If you were a member and cancelled your membership, why did you cancel? Thank you for any feedback you can provide!
-
Ranked Choice Scholarship Scoring
Our organization utilizes a ranked scoring system for our Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program, and we are struggling to translate that system effectively into the evaluation tools in SLM. For this process, our evaluators are evaluating a pool of 10 finalists (one representing each eligible high school in the…
-
"Chosen Name" or "Preferred Name" field for scholarship applicants?
Hello! My organization is considering adding a "chosen name" or "preferred name" field to our scholarship applications after we discovered the need for such a field during our recent scholarship cycle. Do other organizations use a field like this in their applications? If so, could you please share the language that you…
-
GED & Gap Year Questions in SLM Application
Hi all. Just winding up our first year using SLM. Looking back we need to do a better job building the application to represent GED and/or gap year/not currently enrolled students. Curious what info. others gather and how they ask. Thanks in advance for any input.
-
Using third party to obtain financial information
Currently on our UA application we ask students to provide their financial information, as reported on their last tax form, either as a dependent reporting their parents information, or as an independent reporting their own financial information. We have been considering using the third party option to have parents…
-
Teacher Mini-Grants
Would be interested in hearing from any other foundations that do Teacher/Educator mini grants: How do you collect applications (GLM/SLM/Something else)? Do you pay the schools or teachers directly? What is the average award amount? What type of follow-up do you require? Grateful for any information/suggestions you can…
-
Scholarship Renewal Requirements
Hello! Cross posting with NSPA. We are trying to streamline our scholarship payments. Right now, we're all over the map, and it's quite an administrative burden. I know others have been discussing this, too. As part of streamlining the process, we want to create one standard renewal requirement instead of letting the donor…
-
GPA Requirement
Hi everyone! Many of the scholarships we offer have a GPA requirement, so we ask for GPA in the general application phase. Traditionally, we have asked for an unweighted GPA since that is the most consistent across schools. However, this year we had applicants from a school that does not provide an unweighted GPA to…
-
Transition To One Scholarship Committee
Hello! We are looking to transition to one committee that reviews all of the scholarship applications. Currently, each scholarship has their own committee. Do you have any tips on how to transition smoothly? How to select the best candidate for the committee? Or how to announce the change to current committee members?
-
Scoring Preferences
Hi everyone! We are doing an audit of all of our scholarships and one question that has come up is what the best practice for scoring preference criteria is. For example, some of our scholarships have a preference for those with financial need or a preference for those that live in a certain area. Currently, we score these…
-
In relation to scholarships how do you "score" essays and letters of recommendation?
We receive over approximately 500 scholarship applications each year and each application has three letters of recommendations and an essay question that relates to each individual scholarship (we have approx 40 scholarships total). Currently we have a scholarship committee consisting of board members and volunteers that…
