Citizenship question on scholarships?

MollyHelm

Hi--while the family foundation I work with does not fund scholarships, this question came up in a group discussion lately and I'm eager to hear what you all think and how some of you are handling the situation in your worlds.

At a particular organization, it was a given for years that all scholarships only went to US citizens. Every applicant had to check a yes or no box to continue on into the rest of the application.

As the world is changing, they are re-evaluating how to handle their organization's "best practice" and I'm curious what you all are doing, if anything, to address this issue.

Thanks in advance for sharing, if you have opinions, suggestions, ideas or model questions.

TomWickersham

Good question!

Because we don't have any scholarship agreements that require applicants to be a US citizen, we have removed the checkbox from our application. Citizenship does not matter. For new funds, we are restricting the use of this as a criteria in the agreements.

I hope that helps!

Tom

MollyHelm

Thank you!

hankdrew

Do they have to prove they are citizens to receive the scholarship?

We removed citizenship from our scholarship application as well because it was not essential and might have turned away quality candidates.