Scholarship Payments to College/Universities

SaraCryan

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.

1. 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 within the same academic year that it is awarded and just leave it up to the school to split the scholarship however they want which they typically split the scholarship in half between the fall and spring semester. But I do sometimes I get institutions send forms directly to me asking how we should split the payment. Do you let the student decide?
2. What information do you include payment letter about the recipient besides the scholarship name, recipient name and student ID?
3. Do you confirm with the colleges/universities before sending the payments to make sure the students are enrolled? I've been contemplating sending emails to the financial office at the institution to make sure we are sending the check to the right place to let them know that scholarship funds are on the way before mailing the checks. I am trying to decrease the amount of follow up work after the payments are sent.

Any insights are helpful and if anyone has examples they would be willing to share of the letters they send, it would be greatly appreciated!

AshtonWillis

With our renewable scholarships, students must submit that semester's tuition statement and class schedule and the previous semester's grades. That way we can make sure students are enrolled, meet any GPA or course requirements, etc. They must submit all three documents before we send a check to the school.

In our letter to the schools with the scholarship check, I include:

- Which semester the check is used for. For example, I would put that the particular check is to be used "Fall 2020 semester." We do not allow students or schools to split funding among the semesters. If it is a 4 year renewable scholarship, then we divide the total amount among the 8 semesters and if it's a 2 year renewable, then it would be divided among 4 semesters.

- Student name and ID number

- Scholarship name and amount

I can send you our scholarship voucher and letters if you would like specific wording. If you have specific questions about our process, just let me know!

DanielleFleer

Hi @SaraCryan ,

It's been a while since you posted, but thought maybe I could post and still be helpful for you or for others who look at this later.

1. We do the same as you. We send that it is for the academic school year. We have some schools on semesters and others on quarters, so this keeps it pretty general, and then we only send a check once. Most school split it evenly for each semester/quarter, but some schools apply the whole scholarship right when they receive it. If a student specifically reaches out to us to request something different, within reason, we will include that in the letter. If the student didn't reach out and the school contacts me directly, I will tell them our preference is to split it evenly.
2. My answer for this might also answer #3. In addition to what you listed, and ways to contact us if they have questions, we also say specifically that in order for the student to receive their scholarship, they must be enrolled on a full-time basis and meet a GPA requirement. If the student is not enrolled, or not meeting the requirements, we hear from the college. This rarely happens, but it does happen and they are actually pretty good at following up with us. We utilize their website to check their mailing address before sending, but we don't send an email before. I think it helps that we are pretty much sending checks to the same colleges as previous years, and only adding a few new colleges each year, so we have their addresses already. The letter is pretty short and simple. We create and upload the disbursement letter within Foundant, so the student can also see when the letter was sent.

Let me know if you have any follow up questions, hope this helps!

Danielle