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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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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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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?
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Anyone have a good explanation of Outputs vs. Outcomes for grantees?
Hi there, I continue to struggle to get applicants and grantees to submit outcomes rather than outputs in their applications and annual reports. I am looking to provide a guide/detailed description on our Foundation website and was wondering if anyone has a good resource to share that I might use for our website (credit…
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Moved: Does my Idea Lab submission resonate with you??
This discussion has been moved.
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3rd Party Grant Management Fee
One of our partners (the city where we are located) has asked us about managing one of their grant programs. Now that we have GLM (just went live last month) this is a much easier concept and I’m wondering if anyone has any experience doing that in their city? Does anyone have experience in charging a fee for service, by…
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Does anyone have experience with non-competitive grant models?
Hello everyone! As grant makers and funders, I'm sure we've all had our moments of wishing that we could fund all of the amazing projects that we have the privilege of reviewing. One of my Board Members recently expressed frustration with the number of applicants we have to turn away due to lack of funds, and posed the…
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Medical School Scholarship?
Hi everyone: Do any of your organizations offer scholarships for medical school students? A donor would like to establish a non-endowed scholarship fund with us for this purpose and wants it to be impactful. I know med school is an expensive proposition, so what amount would make an impact? What is the payment schedule,…
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Capital Campaign
Hello, everyone! Does anyone have a capital campaign policy in place that you wouldn't mind sharing? We are in the process of creating one and would like to get ideas, view guidelines, and see an application. Any bit of info helps! If you would like to you can email me at: gracie@dccfound.org Thank you so much.
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Language around engaging in political activity in grant acceptance forms?
Hi everyone, Do your grantees have to sign grant acceptance forms to receive their grants? We started including language directly in the award letter for DAF, Agency, and Designated Funds, but we use electronic grant acceptance forms for discretionary funds through GLM. We thought it might be prudent to add to the form…
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Outcomes
We are reevaluating how we collect anticipated outcomes in competitive grant applications. We currently just ask for them to be listed in a textbox, but notice many nonprofits struggle with this portion of the application. How does your organization collect anticipated outcomes in grant applications and what guidance do…
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Performance Measures, Grant Application and Follow-up Report Forms
Hello, I am new to Foundant and I am interested in learning how other foundations structure their application and final report questions pertaining to results/performance measures to facilitate ease of grant monitoring and evaluation. I am wondering how best to structure application questions and final report follow up…
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Have you made any changes to your grant process(es) to make it easier for applicants?
Foundant facilitated a panel of grantseekers to hear what they 'wish funders knew'. Lots of great ideas for improvement. Have you made any changes based on this or other feedback you've received from your applicants / grantees? Please share. Access to the recorded webinar:
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Guidestar and Secretary of State corporation status not matching up
As part of our grant eligibility screen, I run the guidestar charity check before I move applications forward for review. Most all of the applicants checked out on Guidestar as "verified" but when I started building our grant agreements and sent them to our legal counsel for signature, legal counsel found two organizations…
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Partial Funding Question
We are exploring adding a question to our grant application that asks applicants if they would be able to accept/complete their project/program with partial funding. We often partially fund applications and would like to be more transparent up front with applicants. I am struggling to come up with appropriate verbiage to…
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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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Please share your current grantmaking strategies - competitive and discretionary!
Hi! We would like to hear more about what other folks are doing currently with their discretionary grantmaking funds (FOI & unrestricted) this coming year: 1. Grant area priority areas, e.g. disaster response, human services, childcare, arts & culture, environment, education, affordable housing, etc. 2. Purpose of grants,…
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Looking for unique or favorite grant application questions...
Our LOIs and Applications are very similar from year to year. I am looking for some new questions that would help us learn more from the organizations. What questions would make the organizations stand out based on their potential answers? They could be very specific targeted questions or larger, big picture questions.…
