-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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?
-
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…
-
Moved: Does my Idea Lab submission resonate with you??
This discussion has been moved.
-
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…
-
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,…
-
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.
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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:
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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!
-
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,…
-
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.…
-
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,…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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…
-
Inflation Adjustments for Grants
Hi All, I hope I've aimed this query at the correct board. Our (small, private, Philly suburb) foundation has been wondering if it would make sense to offer inflation adjustments to grants we've given in 2022. Has anyone's organization done so? If our Board agreed to do this (send out $ on 2022 grants to adjust for…
-
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…
-
"Matchmaking" between Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) and nonprofits
Hi all, Our community foundation is moving into a more proactive space of serving our DAF holders, including presenting "matchmaking" opportunities to them with current needs in the community and/or in their grantmaking interest areas (which we've been slowly recording in Raisers Edge over the past few years). We do not…