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Scholarship Evaluation
What does your scholarship evaluation look like? What questions are you asking your committee to score? We currently auto score the GPA and income. We have kind generic scores for activities/employment/community service, and then the essay is weighted pretty heavily. Curious if you are asking any other specific questions…
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For foundations that utilize separate general operating and program applications...
Looking for examples of operating and program grant applications and associated evaluations, and how they are presented via Foundant. Thanks, Kristin Broadbent, Three Arches Foundation
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Out of Country Scholarships
Hello! Does your Foundation have a policy for scholarships when the University is out of the country? For example, a US student, that meets all of the requirements of the scholarship, but the University they are planning to attend is located in a different country. (Note: This is not a Study Abroad program). How do you…
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Scholarships-Undecided Students-Universal Application
Hello. I was wondering how others handle undecided students when using the Universal Application. We start our application process mid-December and it ends April 1. Many students (mainly those attending competitive schools) do not know where they will be attending at the time of the application so they choose undecided as…
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Moved: How to facilitate blind review of scholarship applications
This discussion has been moved.
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Follow Up Form / Reporting Dates
When you fund a program, how do you determine the due dates for follow ups? I work for a Community Foundation that makes grants four times a year and requests an interim (6 month) report and a final (12 month) report in follow up forms. We made a grant to a nonprofit in June 2022, so their interim report was due December…
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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…
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Moved: Long Term or Multi-Year Grants
This discussion has been moved.
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Trust Based Grant Agreement Language - care to share a sample?
Hey everyone, With a new year comes fresh perspective (and new questions)! I'm looking for a handful of grant agreements from family foundations that could help us potentially reframe the "Grant Terms" section of our agreement. Bonus would be trust-based agreements, but all types would be helpful. I'm curious to see what…
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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?
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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…
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Moved: Letter of Intent Applications Based on Request Amount
This discussion has been moved.
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Criteria for awarding grants
Hello! Our community foundation is in the process of reviewing the criteria we use to determine which grant applications we will fund during our competitive community grant cycle. We are looking for best practices. Would anyone be willing to share their foundations criteria and/or scoring rubric/matrix for evaluating grant…
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Demographic questions in scholarship application?
Hi everyone, Do you ask demographic questions as part of your scholarship application? We have not included a demographic section, but starting next year, we plan to add optional questions at the beginning of the application to better understand who is applying and receiving our scholarships. Initially, I planned to use…
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How long is your scholarship application open?
For years, our organization's annual scholarship application has opened on January 15 and closed two months later on March 15. We're considering moving up the deadline and having the application open for a shorter period of time, possibly 6 weeks. What are the open & close dates for your scholarship program? What factors…
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Combining Scholarship Funds
Hello everyone! We are currently seeking effective processes to combine smaller scholarship funds into one scholarship, perhaps by region, but want to make sure we are honoring the desires of our fund holders and donors. Is there any advice for how to effectively combine scholarships to better serve students and the needs…
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Scholarship Follow ups
I am wanting to know what other foundations' practice is for scholarships and follow-ups. We pay the school once a year for renewal scholarships and ask the students to submit a mid-year follow-up with their transcript from the fall along with the financials and then one for the end of the semester to make sure we know…
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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…
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Grant Review Practices
I'm looking for advice from an organization that has experienced growth and had to adapt their grant review process. We are small, but growing. We now regularly receive 50+ grant applications for each cycle and our current process is an "everyone is involved in everything" approach. All board members evaluate the…
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Multi-Year Grants
How do other funders handle reporting for multi-year grants? Do you ask for a final report only when the project is finished? We have a multi-year grant commitment from 2019 that, due to COVID, had delays in the project implementation and it has not even been started yet. The project deadline is 2026, but the final report…
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Scholarship Checks vs. Gift Cards
Hello, I'm wondering if anyone uses gift cards rather than checks to award scholarships? Every year we are reaching out to students, specifically our middle school award winners, multiple times encouraging them to cash their checks. I'm interested in how other foundations handle this problem. Thanks!
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Evaluating Community Quality of Life/Vibrancy Projects
I are interested in learning how other funders evaluate projects that improve quality of life and/or create vibrancy in a community (parks, recreation, arts, community spaces & places).
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Grants to Government Entities
Hi all, Due to the nature of our grantmaking, we often end up granting to military installations, national parks, public schools, etc. I've been struggling with how to manage these entries in Foundant when every organization is essentially filtered by their EIN. We have a ton of applicants who, rightfully, end up entering…
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Scholarships to a for-profit school
Hi everyone, We have an org fund that is the "friends of," or fundraising arm of a for-profit school. The "Friends of" Fund wants to distribute scholarships to the for-profit school to eligible students. Do any of you manage anything similar to this scenario? Thanks for any insight! Lori Sellers Trenholm Director of…
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Using Standardized Test Scores to Evaluate Scholarship Applicants
After making standardized test scores optional on our UA in 2021, we returned to requiring them in 2022. None of our individual scholarship opportunities use test scores for eligibility, but our reviewers have found them helpful in assessing applicants' academics. Given the trend toward colleges/universities not requiring…
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Scholarship - room and board
Good afternoon, I have a few questions related to scholarship payments: Do you limit scholarship payments to tuition and fees required for enrollment or attendance at the educational institution, or for fees, books, supplies, and equipment required for courses at the educational institution? Do you allow students to use…
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RFP for Senior Programs/Projects
Hi all, We are planning to open a call for proposals from local nonprofits to support programs/projects focused on seniors specifically. We want to keep the initial RFP flexible and do not want to add many requirements on the type of program it should be however we are thinking we should avoid funding any programs that…
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Challenge Grant Cancellation Letter Example
In GLM we make challenge grant awards with a dollar for dollar match. Once they raise the match we match with our commitment. We have a challenge that isn't going to be met and we need to cancel it in GLM, but I need to send a formal letter advising them of the cancellation. I was wondering if anyone has done this in the…
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Awarding to non 501(c)3s and verifying
Hi there! I read the other discussion post about awarding to non-501(c)3s but wasn't quite what my team was looking for. We are a pass-through entity that awards federal funds for conservation related projects. As of now, we only do 501(c)(3)s but are looking to expand to other 501(c)s, starting with at least 50(c)(4)s and…
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Trust-Based Philanthropy
The community foundation I work for is starting research regarding the trust based philanthropy model. I am curious if there are other community foundations out there already engaging in this practice. Can you provide a couple of pros and cons regarding your experience? What has been the biggest challenge?
