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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.…
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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,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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"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…
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Grant Application Review Checklist
Hi all, I just wanted to start a conversation around grant application reviews and see what others are doing to review applications. I mostly ask this because I know many of you will know that there are many components to a grant application, and keeping track of all components can be a little cumbersome. So, I would love…
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Moved: Scholarships that are paid in full
This discussion has been moved.
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scholarship reporting - awarded vs. distributed?
Hello! Each year there unfortunately is a discrepancy between the total # and $$ amount for scholarships due to a variety of factors; I'm sure many of you can relate. Curious to know how other scholarship providers handle reporting for marketing, annual reports, etc. do you use awarded vs. distributed totals? or a combo of…
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Telling the Story
@JoshuaBernard and I really enjoyed facilitating the conversation at our Coffee Talk today, "Telling the Story". So I've created this post to continue the discussion! What kind of stories are you telling? Who is your audience? What is your goal in telling your story? Do you use data, narratives, or visuals? What are the…
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Training for Volunteers conducting Site Visits/Grant Interviews/Grant Review
Hello everyone! I am hoping to hear from anyone who provides a training or orientation for volunteers (whether they are Board Members, Grants Committee members, or community volunteers) who conduct Site Visits / Grant Interviews / Grant Reviews for grant applications. We are hoping to put together a training that addresses…
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Question: Do grantmakers fund past expenses?
Hello my name is Linda, I am new to this group however I need to know for a meeting today whether or not Grant makers fund past expenses such as $5000 toward website development spent last week. Thank you, I look forward to introducing myself at a later date.
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Grant Data Collection
I wanted to start a discussion around data collection, specifically to see what kind of data you all are collecting from your grantees. I am going through my first round of analyzing accountability reports since joining the organization I am with and sad to see we aren't collecting much quantitative data; a majority of the…
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Webinar follow up - Connecting Your Scholarship Program to Your Organization's Strategy
@JuliaDaSilva from the Triangle Community Foundation shared how they have made significant changes to their scholarship administration practices to align their scholarship program with the foundation's overarching strategy. In this webinar, she highlighted changes they made to their application to remove barriers for…
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Moved: Site Visit: Matrix
This discussion has been moved.
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Sample Template Letter to Donor to reach Minimum Endowed Fund Balance
Hi all, Would you mind sharing or uploading any template you may have on notices to endowed fund holders (DAFs, Agency, Designated, Scholarship, etc) to share that they have not met their minimum fund balance per policy guidelines, and advice on next steps? Thank you very much! Missy Belles
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Moved: Rescinding a Grant Award
This discussion has been moved.
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Scholarship Policies - focus on administration of multi-year awards
We're looking to add some strength to our scholarship policy. While it covers the necessary/required bases, it leans more toward the nuts and bolts of establishing the fund and its criteria. Many of the nuances that come along through administration are handled on a case-by-case basis and I'd like to make it more…
