Scholarship Thank You
LoriLaliberteRoss
Posts: 5 ✭
We require the students to write their "thank you to the donors" on the follow-up form when they claim their scholarship. If they received more than one scholarship, they write one thank you. I attach the letter and email it to the donors/fund advisors. I'm curious on how others handle thank you letters. This is our second year with this procedure. We had one complaint this year as they felt it was not personal enough and because it was emailed. I believe this works quite well, we are not chasing down thank you notes/letters from students and holding up scholarship payments. I would love any feedback! Thank you!
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We do the same, but also offer the option to students to send a handwritten note and a few do each year.
We have a few who never complete the thank-you. I'm curious if others encounter that, and if so, do you still pay out the scholarship?
The students have to "claim their scholarship" by providing the school and ID on the follow up form. The thank you is required on that form to submit. I still do have to remind some students to claim by our deadline of July 1st. I'm not just chasing down a thank you… If they do not complete the follow up form, the scholarship is not paid.
We know that their thank you notes and high school graduation photo have value for our donors. For our new students we have the request for high school graduation photo and thank you note embedded in the Recipient Information form and that works most of the time.
Colleges often make a "thank you note" as a prerequisite to the student getting funds but we have not taken that route.
Would like to hear more from others.
@DeirdreMcLoughlin Thanks for your input. If you don't have a thank you as a prerequisite to funding, do you provided other basic information from the Recipient form to your donors with the photo? If so, what all do you share to keep your donors engaged?
We send out an award letter to the selected recipients and ask students to submit a thank you note. And then we forward that onto the donor (typically I hand write a note along with the students thank you note). We also remind students at the time they are ready to submit their follow up form within Foundant if they haven't already OR to share a success story about their first semester at college. They have the option to upload a photo as well at that time on the follow up form. Sometimes donors get more than one thank you from a student, but I figure it's better than nothing :)
Mikayla, if we do not receive a thank you note and/or photo, there are 2 scenarios. 1. the donor has already been part of the evaluation committee, so they already would have had a list of the student, college and major and high school. 2. if a donor has not been involved, indeed it is just the family, we usually just list the name, college, major and high school.