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3rd Party Question- Scholarships
I'm in the process of building a branching question around the student Expected Family Contribution (EFC) off the upload of the FAFSA report. When I tried to build the branching rule, I was unable to do so. Does anyone know how to build a branching question from a file upload? Is this even possible to do? Thanks
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Experience administering business relief grants - specifically CDBG-CV?
Good afternoon all, The Community Foundation of Abilene has agreed to administer small business relief grants, made available to our city through CDBG-CV funds. Do any of my peers have experience in this world, and would you be willing to share info/best practices? I'm happy to connect via phone or zoom. Thanks, Michelle…
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Weighting Grant Evaluation Questions
We need to improve our evaluation process, and it has become obvious we need to weigh evaluation questions. As it stands now, rating questions on a scale of is helpful, but this does a poor job of weeding out bias. For example, I am seeing that even if there is a significant governance issue in an applying organization,…
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Scholarship Coffee Talk: Learn from the past, & look to the future
Thanks for joining us on today's Scholarship Coffee Talk! You had some brilliant suggestions for your colleagues which we will be sharing here along with the chat notes and recording link. In the meantime, please continue the discussion with questions, comments, & tips.
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Ideas for evaluation tool for client
We have a grantee who is giving out beds to any / all who "need" them. The need is determined by the person / family voicing their need - there are no "qualifications" of any sort. The organization does not collect any information from the person who receives the bed, except name and maybe a phone #. This org is run by…
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Community Service Grants/International Mission Grants
Hi All, My foundation is exploring two new types of grants: Community Service Outreach - grants would go to high school academies who have customized community outreach projects needed in their areas. International Mission - orphanage, K-12 education type projects Does anyone have experience in these categories / have…
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Online Payments for Grants
With everything virtual these days, I wanted to see if other Foundations are making online grant payments to nonprofits? We normally mail checks, but have been asked by a few fund holders if we can make online payments in lieu of sending a check. This is normally because of a specific fundraiser they are participating in…
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Setting up a scholarship fund in the midst of a tragic death
I know those of you who offer scholarship funds have encountered this before.... A family loses a child in a tragic death and wants to set up a scholarship fund A.S.A.P. because they want to direct memorial gifts to that fund. Putting aside the issue of whether or not they will raise enough in memorial gifts to establish a…
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Grantees and Legal Action
Hello everyone, Does anyone have a process for asking applicants and/or grantees if their organization is involved in any type of litigation? Thank you
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Working With Other Grantmakers In Your Geographic Area
I've noticed a recent trend with our GLM clients finding little ways to make their grant applications easier for applicants. Often times this means creating a shorter, simpler application - but what about creating more similar applications? Are there any grantmakers out there who are working together with other funders in…
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Letters of Recommendation (Scholarships)
Hello! We are currently building our scholarship application and are considering making some changes in regards to letters of recommendation. Previously, we have asked students to request two letters of recommendation and upload them to their applications. We often receive form letters and have heard from our committees…
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Compliance
Looking for some example checklists on compliance prior to grant awards/distributions. Checking their tax status is obviously one. What other tasks are done in your org in the compliance column? What is your internal process for compliance? Thanks.
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Interview Alternatives
We conduct interviews for a few of our scholarships. We cancelled the interviews for one of our scholarships which would have taken place on April 8th because the award event that follows where the recipient is announced was postponed (and will most likely get cancelled). We conduct interviews for 2 other scholarships in…
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Fees Associated With Hosting Applications
I am the Scholarship and Programs Associate for a Community Foundation in Georgia. Our scholarship portfolio is small. We have funds with their own grant or scholarship process with us only providing a link on our site while others ask us to manage the entire application and selection process for them. As we continue to…
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Scholarship Providers Regional Collaboratives
On our coffee talk today, @SarahBattersby mentioned their regional scholarship providers collaborative. Are you interested in creating a scholarship collaborative in your area? Do you have one already? We would love to hear both questions and advice in this discussion thread. I know I can't wait to learn more!
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General operating support grants
Hi all, We are just starting out with Foundant and at the same time starting to offer operating grants. If you provide general operating support grants based on an application process, would you be willing to share your grant application. Thanks, Sheila
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Scholarship Withdrawals
We have a scholarship program for dependents of employees. We increased the amount of per semester scholarship to $3,000. Several schools do not cost this much leaving the student a balance on their fee bill. I have had a request from a student for permission to withdraw the remainder to purchase supplies/computer etc.…
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Scholarship Scoring Rubric
Hello all, Our Foundation is currently looking into restructuring the scoring rubric of our scholarship program to make our application and selection process more equitable. For example, we looking to identify work ethic, leadership, and community service in other ways rather than using GPA and SAT scores. Does anyone have…
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Implementing a Letter of Intent into our unrestricted grant process
Good morning, At Adirondack Foundation we have never used an LOI with our grantmaking processes. I would like to hear from those of you who use LOI's as to how you streamlined your process with LOI's or if it just adds one more step? We are hoping to use an LOI as a way to help us narrow down larger funding requests we're…
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Scholarships - Survey of Applicants, Evaluators
Hi all, I really appreciated attending the Foundant Coffee Talk last week. We are considering sending a survey to our applicants about their application experience. We will also be having discussions with our Evaluators regarding this last scholarship cycle. If you already survey your applicants and evaluators, what are…
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Grant Reports
Looking for some great examples of Grant reports as follow-up documents. I've got my paper grant report forms that I've been planning to integrate into the GLM as a follow-up. But I'm always looking to see if any one has a better report form, especially now that I'm doing this electronically for the first time. Thanks for…
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Scholarship Payments to College/Universities
Looking to see how other scholarship providers handle their payments directly to the college/university and what workflows you have found to work best for your organization. Do you indicate on the letter sent with the scholarship check how to split the payments? We have always just said that the scholarship should be used…
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Evaluations & Scoring
Hello everyone, This isn't a technical question per sae, but I was wondering how other organizations evaluate or score qualitative responses. Having just completed our very first bursary cycle I was struck by how emotional the committees members evaluations were. We all found it incredibly difficult to be scoring one…
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Scholarship Application Questions/Examples
Is anyone willing to provide a copy of their scholarship applications for reference in building our own? The Foundation strives to support medical students to hopefully end up practicing and staying local throughout their careers. Do you have any ideas on questions we could ask to align with our mission? Or general…
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International Scholarships
Hi from New Orleans! We are considering offering scholarships to dependent children of employees in non-us offices which include Australia, Ireland, Great Britain, France, and Canada. Does anyone have experience with this? Some of my specific questions are: We normally make the check payable to the university and the…
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Outreach for National Scholarships
We are looking for ways to increase our reach and impact for our national scholarship program, shifting from select partner colleges (8-10 total in the past) to a larger national scale (jumping from ~50 scholarship recipients per year to potentially 200-300 scholarship recipients per year). How do other scholarship…
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Moved: Adding Additional Funding to a Previously Given Grant
This discussion has been moved.
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Scholarship Committee Member Job Description
Here is our job description that we provide our scholarship committee members at the beginning of each scholarship cycle. I have not updated this with the new timeline that we'll be working with COVID-19, but we still intend for them to be able to do their scoring entirely online and not have a need to meet in any way to…
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Shifts in Youth Philanthropy/Grantmaking Programs
Aside from working at Foundant, I am a mentor for our local Youth Giving Project where a cohort of 13 local high aged students help to decide grant funding of $10,000. With schools moving to remote, and stay at home orders in place we have made the decision to wrap up or programming for 2019-2020 early. Luckily, we had…
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Scholarship Application Submission Numbers
Hi all, One thing I noticed this year is our overall application submission numbers were lower than 2019 and 2018. Did anyone else see that in their submission numbers as well? Our outreach was similar to years past, but with an obvious inability to reach out to schools since March 6th (spring break in Alaska), I missed…