Change in Scholarship Criteria Due to Company Merger

LaurieAbildso

We manage a scholarship fund that benefits children and grandchildren of a company that recently merged and no longer exists as the entity identified in the fund agreement.  Additionally, the newly-formed company announced the closure of the main facility, which will significantly narrow the applicant pool if the original criteria are maintained. Does anyone have experience navigating this type of situation? Did you continue to make awards for employees' relatives of the original company for a set period of time?

LynsieStephens

Hi Laurie! I'm a Solutions Engineer here at Foundant but prior to that I managed scholarships for The Dallas Foundation for many years. They have a scholarship specifically for children of employees of what was once a very large company. Due to downsizing, and eventually a big merger, the company has gone away while the fund still have a significant asset balance. We amended the eligibility requirements in the fund agreement to specifically define what we called "legacy employees", meaning any one who was an employee of the company during a certain time period, or up until a certain date.

The scholarship itself continued to children of legacy employees, but then the new challenge we faced was how to keep in touch with them year after year. the HR team used to handle all of the scholarship promotion, but after the company was acquired, that fell into our hands. I'm not sure it was the ideal solution, but just before the company switched over, their HR team sent out multiple notices for every employee with children to fill out a google form for us giving us contact information, and the ages of their children. This allowed us to target emails to legacy employees many years down the road, when their child was 17/18.

Let me know if you want to talk through this more - we had some trial and error for sure, but in the end we were able to continue supporting legacy employee's children, until the fund eventually sunsetted.

LaurieAbildso

Thanks so much, Lynsie. I like the creative solution for keeping in contact with "legacy employees." It would be great to talk with you about your experience with this scholarship. I will message you directly. Thanks again!