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Corporate/Employee Scholarships
Our team is working with a donor to establish a scholarship program for his employees. This is new to our foundation, and we want to ensure we set it up correctly. Is anyone willing to share their agreement language, criteria, scholarship committee makeup, process for working with HR to make sure you are meeting the…
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Using Google translate
We have a large Spanish-speaking population of students, but our organization doesn't have the resources to have our entire scholarship application translated for this year's application cycle. We're thinking of promoting the Google translate feature to help reduce barriers for these students. Has anyone used Google…
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Third party payment processor
Hello! Does anyone use a 3rd party to process large amounts of payments for international scholarship recipients? We're looking to move the payment process for one of our larger scholarships from in house to an outsourced party. Any insight would be great!
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Agency Funds and Scholarships
Hello All, We recently received a request from one of our agency funds to distribute funds to an institution for named scholarship recipients. My understanding is that agency funds are intended to support the nonprofit and must be distributed directly to the nonprofit. I am curious if any Community Foundations allow their…
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Sports Eligibility Criteria
Hello! We have a scholarship in which participation in a sport is mandatory. We have had several inquiries as to if dance, marching band, other activities are considered a "sport." Does anyone have similar criteria and how to you define a "sport" Thanks!
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Scholarship "Essay" Questions - Fixed, Choose Your Own, Short, Long?
Hello fellow scholarship providers! I work for the Pedrozzi Foundation and we provide undergraduate, community college, tech/vocational, and grad scholarships to students in Livermore, CA. We are merit based, but award higher dollar amounts to students with financial need. We are always looking to improve our application,…
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Do you measure or track scholarship impact? What metrics do you use?
NSPA has some great resources and webinars about metrics to measure scholarship impact. I'm curious if anyone here tracks or measures your scholarship programs. Some metrics I found are Student Persistence year to year, Degree Completion (both on-time and delayed), Debt at Graduation, Scholarship Renewal Rate, Retention…
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Pooled Scholarships
We recently had a conversation with a new board member who wanted to know if he could donate a small amount of money for a scholarship. We had a long discussion about how we seek endowments on scholarships due to the amount of work involved….i.e. every scholarship has different criteria and is therefore a different…
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Scholarship Fund Management Questions
I am trying to gauge what other community foundations are doing to manage their scholarship funds. What is your minimum amount to start a fund? Ours is $50k currently but we want to make sure that the awards from the endowment (usually 4%) are large enough to be worth it to students, so we are looking to raise this…
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Scholarship policies
Based on the changing higher education environment, we are considering some changes to our scholarship policy and would like to hear from other foundations. Scholarships are a big piece of our work and we want to make sure they continue to be relevant and serve students, as well as carry out our donors' wishes. Our…
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Trade and Technical scholarships
Hello! We have scholarships available to students getting a trade or technical degree or certification. There is a big push toward trade and technical fields, and we know kids are going into these fields. We also have donors willing to fund more of these types of scholarships. However, we struggle to get kids to apply.…
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Family Business Scholarship Fund
Looking for guidance in setting up a local (private) family business scholarship fund. They have numerous employees whom have financial need for personal or family higher education expenses. Father who started the company, would directly pay expenses of individuals. Son is now looking to extend charity and generosity…
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What changes is your scholarship program making in response to Student Loan Forgiveness?
This month's Coffee Talk focused on how Scholarship Managers are responding to the Student Loan Forgiveness program. Here are a couple of previous Compass conversations related to this topic you might want to check out: Reverse Scholarships and Loan Forgiveness Please share the changes or adjustments your organization is…
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EFC to SAI change
After researching FAFSA changes I am in a state of confusion. I realize FAFSA changes were scheduled to go into effect on 07-01-23. I have found conflicting dates related to the EFC to SAI change. Our scholarship application opens October 1, 2022 and closes March 1, 2023. We typically ask students to list their EFC and…
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scholarship reporting - awarded vs. distributed?
Hello! Each year there unfortunately is a discrepancy between the total # and $$ amount for scholarships due to a variety of factors; I'm sure many of you can relate. Curious to know how other scholarship providers handle reporting for marketing, annual reports, etc. do you use awarded vs. distributed totals? or a combo of…
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Webinar follow up - Connecting Your Scholarship Program to Your Organization's Strategy
@JuliaDaSilva from the Triangle Community Foundation shared how they have made significant changes to their scholarship administration practices to align their scholarship program with the foundation's overarching strategy. In this webinar, she highlighted changes they made to their application to remove barriers for…
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Sample Template Letter to Donor to reach Minimum Endowed Fund Balance
Hi all, Would you mind sharing or uploading any template you may have on notices to endowed fund holders (DAFs, Agency, Designated, Scholarship, etc) to share that they have not met their minimum fund balance per policy guidelines, and advice on next steps? Thank you very much! Missy Belles
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Non-discrimination Clauses and Race-specific Scholarships
What language do you use related to non-discrimination in your fundholder agreements and public communications about scholarships? Do you refer to a specific law, or have a list of "we do not discriminate based on X"? How do you rectify these non-discrimination clauses with scholarships that are for a specific race,…
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Scholarship Policies - focus on administration of multi-year awards
We're looking to add some strength to our scholarship policy. While it covers the necessary/required bases, it leans more toward the nuts and bolts of establishing the fund and its criteria. Many of the nuances that come along through administration are handled on a case-by-case basis and I'd like to make it more…
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Scholarship Application Abandon Rate?
Hi everyone, Do you look at your scholarship application abandon rate? We are looking at historical data on how many scholarship applications are started but not completed. I'm wondering if others have done this and what percentage of students do not finish their applications? Is there any average or national data on this?…
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Scholarship Evaluations and Committees
We have several committees that review multiple scholarship applications for different scholarships. Many of the applications for the different scholarships are the same students in each group. This year we had one student come out on top for a group of 5 scholarships the committee was evaluating. Does anyone have…
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Award Displacement Language
I was on a coffee talk yesterday Re: WORKING WITH COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES, and someone mentioned that they use Award Displacement Language in their check letters. I would really appreciate if someone could share that verbiage. Thanks😊
