Scholarship Providers Regional Collaboratives

AlyseBraaten

On our coffee talk today, @SarahBattersby mentioned their regional scholarship providers collaborative. Are you interested in creating a scholarship collaborative in your area? Do you have one already? We would love to hear both questions and advice in this discussion thread. I know I can't wait to learn more!

SarahBattersby

Glad to talk further about if there's interest! We have a good combination of foundations, university providers, (4 year and 2 year), nonprofits and credit unions, and our state educational assistance authority. We meet twice a year. It's been great to share struggles and resources, and it also helps us connect our students to other scholarship opportunities open to them.

AlyseBraaten

When you meet, what's on the agenda? How long do those meetings normally last? What does communication outside the scheduled meetings look like? I would guess this is a lot of keeping a general pulse on the sector and less leveraging funding. Does that sound correct?

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@AshtonWillis @JanetWhite @NatalieWood @KellySheridan @KarinDunn @LaurenWeber @Cathyfitzpatrick @CarolSloper @elliedefrangesco @MichelleFrederickson @SaraCryan @kimminettles @HeatherCrowl @BettieStammerjohn @KatieStout @MichelleCollins @JanineBaschoff @BethNuttall @AlisonEvans @YaniOrtizSuarez @DeborahClark @kristineoconnor @SarahBattersby @KlaraHickmanova@NicoleSmolkovich @CarolynSiegfried @LisaBoxWilliams @ErikaOrsulak @AllisonFindley @MarciTompkins

BettieStammerjohn

@AlyseBraaten , @SarahBattersby

I would love to know more about a regional scholarship provider collaborative!

Bettie

SarahBattersby

We typically meet for about 2 hours (pre-COVID that included some time to eat lunch and generally network). The desire for what hte topic is varies, but we've done general sharing (fall meeting) and some small-group work (spring meeting). I imagine the fall meeting this year will be 1-1.5 hours (since it's virtual) and focus pretty exclusively on COVID and adapting to that. Outside of the meeting, we have a LinkedIn group, and otherwise it's just personal emails. I tend to lean on the collaborative for 2 reasons--1.) helping students find additional support and 2.) helping donors who aren't a fit for our focus and function find a home for their desired scholarship. We also have a list of our partner's scholarships on our resource page here:

https://trianglecf.org/students/resources-for-students/

AlyseBraaten

@SarahBattersby Were you part of the start up of this group or did you join it after it was established? I'd be really curious to know if it just started with some emails saying, "hey, we should be talking more."

SarahBattersby

@AlyseBraaten, myself and my colleague Julia Da Silva founded it after talking with one of our local credit unions (the Latino Community Credit Union) about each other's scholarship programs and realizing we were supporting some of the same students. Also, running into so many local providers year after year at awards ceremonies but not really knowing them! We invited the folks we knew to start and said "who do you know? invite them too!". Since then, every time we meet a new provider we invite them--we've added some really interesting members I never would have met otherwise, like the Mexican Consulate based in our area.

And to your earlier question--at this point, there is no shared/pooled funding, and no staff (other than myself and Julia). Our Foundation usually buys lunch for attendees but that's essentially the only cost. We did get feedback not to start before 10am, since our service area 4 counties and it can take a while to get to the meeting after school drop-off etc. We've been rotating locations, based on who's able ot host--if no one can for a particular meeting, we will host. And virtual this year of course!

KellieUtzinger

If you missed it or would like to hear it again, here's the link to the podcast of last week's Scholarships Coffee Talk. There were some great discussions around how some Scholarship providers have setup regional collaboratives to share ideas and support students more effectively.