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Scholarships -- Determining Financial Need
Hey everyone! I am building our application with Foundant and using this as an opportunity to re-think some of the questions on our application. Several of our scholarships are based on financial need. Currently, I ask students to list their estimated college expenses, scholarships they have for the upcoming year, and…
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FAFSA Challenges - What did you do?! Coffee Talk
We had a great live Coffee Talk about FAFSA at the Foundant Summit Conference. Here are some comments from the participants, grouped by theme. Please add thoughts & ideas of your own - We can revisit this next year when we do it all again! FAFSA CHAOS: WHAT DID YOU DO?! We bailed on the whole FAFSA thing and instead went…
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ACH Scholarship payments
Hello All, We've moved our grant payments to ACH, and now we're working on using ACH for scholarship payments. In the past, we mailed a check for each student award along with a cover letter. Sometimes that meant sending 10 or more checks and letters in one envelope to the school. For those of you currently using ACH for…
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Scholarships are in, now what
I'm looking for best practices or procedure list of how to process scholarships through SLM before sending apps to evaluators/selection committees. Do you review them and abandon ones that clearly don't qualify, etc. and then mark the app complete, etc? Would appreciate your insights or any shared docs of procedures.…
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AI Generated Responses from Applicants
My organization uses Foundant for Grant, Scholarship, and Assistantship applications. We recently received two applications that were generated by AI (ChatGPT). The prompt to the essay was copied, pasted, and entered into ChatGPT and the response generated was submitted directly to the scholarship application as the…
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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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District Wide Common Scholarship Application Software
Hello! Has anyone successfully partnered with other scholarship providers in their area to put application processes from different organizations onto the same software? The vision is a scholarship software solution for the entire school district so there is just one place that students go to fill out scholarship…
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Reverse Scholarship Program
Good morning, If you are running a reverse scholarship program, I have questions for you! Are you storing applicants social security numbers in SLM? Have you converted any existing scholarship funds to fund a reverse scholarship? Thank you,
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Class rank as part of evaluation process
One of our local school districts will be eliminating class rank as part of their student data, and their guidance office reached out to me for some input. We don't use class rank as part of our scholarship evaluation, but I know other organizations may, so I told her I would reach out to other scholarship providers. Their…
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Note keeping across staff
Hi - I searched but couldn't find this thread already. We have several staff out in the community having conversations with orgs, performing site visits, etc and want to establish a good way of sharing that information across the team. How do other CFs track notes and takeaways from meetings with nonprofit orgs and other…
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Submitted GPA vs. GPA on the transcript
Hello scholarship administrators. We are struggling with the GPA inputted by students vs. the unweighted GPA on the transcript. Although we specifically ask students to input their unweighted GPA as it reads on their transcript, we have found that often it's not a the same as what's on the transcript...which we discover…
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FAFSA Delays
Hello! I'm struggling with deciding how to best move forward with our scholarship application due to the FAFSA delays. We typically ask students to upload a copy of their FAFSA Student Aid Report and have them input their Student Aid Index found on the report. The problem is that many students have submitted their…
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Second Semester Scholarships
Help us settle a debate. We have a number of scholarships that are paid in the student's second semester (usually January). Should the payment of these scholarships be counted toward the year they were awarded, or the year they were paid? For example: a student graduates in 2023 and is awarded a scholarship to be paid…
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With the FAFSA issues, has anyone changed the application for finanical information?
As a Community Foundation with a Live scholarship application, I have received a couple of calls from frantic students. I have the FAFSA estimator in my application and am considering using that number for financial-based scholarships. We could change the due date to later, but I want that to be my last resort. I am…
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Required Financial Documents for a Grant
What financial documents do you require from an organization requesting a grant. Specifically, do you require an audited financial statement from the organization requesting a grant? If not, what do you require and what do you suggest we look for?
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Funds released on training completion - best practices
Hi, Our organization is looking to create the process for the following grant and I was wondering if anyone else has implemented a similar grant? What worked, what did not? Any landmines I should look out for? [Some of the grant overview language is off as names of our partners have been redacted.] Grant Overview: Through…
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Multiple tribute cards under one tribute object.
We are just moving over to CSuites and I am looking for some suggestions on how to adapt our current tribute card process. We have people donate to a fund in memory/honor of a person and ask that a tribute card be sent to a specific person. A tribute "object" is created in CSuite, with the memory/honor persons name. All…
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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…
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Third Party Request Form
How can I resend the original third party request email? Our grantees miss it when it comes through and then ask for us to resend it. I can send a e-mail from that page but it doesn't include the original link.
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Thoughtful Application Design [Connecting and Continuing the Conversation]
Hello, Friends! Our recent webinar on crafting applications that truly connect had some of our highest engagement. We're starting this discussion as a "hub" for the folks looking to connect with other attendees, continue conversations started in the chat (transcript to come), and build on the advice our presenters shared.…
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Capacity building grant application samples
We are in the process of updating our capacity building grant process. I am wondering if anyone offers capacity building grants and would be willing to share their grant application with us. Thank you.
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Writable PDF of Grant Application
We've had a few grant applicants requesting a writable pdf of our grant applications. They prefer answering grant questions in a separate document and save before copying and pasting answers into the actual application. GLM has a "questions list" that can be downloaded/printed and the apply page has a preview of our…
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DAF letters to advisors regarding pledges
Hi. We are looking to update our wordage in our letters to our DAF advisors regarding pledges. Specifically, the United Way pledges. Does any have any examples of their letters that they are willing to share? Thank you in advance!
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Grant Acceptance Forms & Best Practices
Hi All, I am reaching out for your best practices when it comes to signing grant acceptance forms. Currently, our Foundation has a grant acceptance form built out in GLM that is assigned as a follow-up form. Below are the questions that we ask regarding authorization to sign/accept. Most often, we find that the person who…
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Student thank you videos - which platforms are you using?
Hi everyone, We have decided not to continue our annual scholarship reception event. Instead, we plan to gather student thank you videos to share with donors individually and the public. We are currently looking at two platforms: Thank View and Memory Fox. Does anyone have experience with either or both and have…
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How to handle FAFSA delays in scholarship judging?
Hello, I'm a newer admin and first time post-writer. Our scholarships give consideration to FAFSA results, but this year there are major difficulties for students in completing the FAFSA form. How have you handled this issue? Financial need isn't among our highest priorities, so I'm considering removing the FAFSA questions…
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Would anyone be willing to share an example of their process summary?
Hi, we are a family foundation in CT and I am in the process of working on our grant application in the GLM. We do not accept unsolicited proposals. However, any example of a process summary would be useful; just to get me started :) TIA!
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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…
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Marketing Scholarships to Non-traditional Students
Our foundation needs help reaching continuing college and nontraditional students to notify them of scholarship and educational loan opportunities available through our foundation. How are other community foundations marketing to prospective scholarship applicants who are not in high school?
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Eligible Organizations for Scholarships
Good Morning, Has anyone had experience issuing a post secondary scholarship to a school that was deemed not an "eligible educational institution" (see below definition from the IRS). We recently came across a scenario where a trade specific school (i.e. Welding, Electrical) said that they cannot accept funds from a…