Combining Scholarship Funds

HerlandaHampton

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 of our donors? Thank you!

KarenSunderman

Following! May be navigating the same soon.

DaraGannon

We have been talking about this too. We have one board-created scholarship with really broad criteria, so one option is to add smaller funds to that one to have a greater impact. An individual award could still be named in honor of the original fund or fundholder. But would we still charge a fee if it wasn't its own fund? Sorry I have more questions than answers! Hopefully someone is further along in this process. :) Thanks!

elianapritchett

@HerlandaHampton @KarenSunderman @DaraGannon We have recently been discussing this as well! While we haven't started this process yet our thoughts are:

1. Consider combining scholarships that generate less than $1,000/year in spendable funds
2. Communicate with any living donors/fund representatives to see if they would be willing to add more funds or pool their funds with others. Some donors have also opted to un-endow and sunset their funds, so this may be an option as well.
3. For scholarships without living donors, our plan is to research donor intent to the best of our ability. Some of our fund agreements have language allowing us to change the scholarship if it "is no longer fulfilling its purpose." If we are able to determine that the fund is no longer fulfilling its purpose, we would likely bring it to the Board and recommend sunsetting or combining the fund(s).

Of course, this all depends on the records available as well as the purpose of the scholarship. It will be much easier to combine more general scholarships and much more difficult to combine scholarships with narrow criteria.

We have also considered letting some smaller funds sit dormant for a few years to allow them to grow a little bit before resuming annual granting. With the cost of education increasing, we feel it is imperative to offer scholarships that make a real impact.

I hope this helps!

HerlandaHampton

This is very helpful! Thank you so much for this feedback.