Donor involvement in scholarship process
Good morning,
Do you allow donor involvement in your scholarship process? If so, how are donors involved? What information do you share with donors? Do you allow donors to review their own scholarship applications?
Thank you!
Comments
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Hello! We do allow donors to participate in the review process for their scholarships if they are interested. We take several actions as an organization to comply with our understanding of the IRS rules around donor involvement.
- We require that they submit their committee membership to us annually for approval by our board of directors.
- Donors and their families cannot be a majority of the committee; we require that they recruit friends/neighbors/coworkers to balance our their family's participation on the committee.
- A foundation staff (me) or trained scholarship reviewer volunteer is assigned to each committee to provide official oversight of the process.
- We ask each committee to submit their completed evaluation paperwork to us so we have documentation that the decisions were made based on the pre-approved evaluation framework and not because of personal knowledge or relationships.
I would be happy to discuss further if you have questions! Feel free to reach out to me.
Best,
Rachael Watkins
Director of Scholarships
Truman Heartland Community Foundation
watkins@thcf.org1 -
Hi! I am the Scholarship Manager at the Quad Cities Community Foundation, and we also allow donors to participate in the application review & decision process. I meet with them when they are setting up their fund if they decide they want to participate in the decision so I can clearly review the steps with them, including:
- They must complete a Conflict of Interest form every year, and must notify me (and subsequently not participate that year) if they are related to or have a conflict of interest regarding any applicants.
- I give them access to their applications in SLM, and provide training on how to access and evaluate.
- Our scholarship committee is divided up into subcommittees, each reviewing 5-6 scholarships. I, or one of my colleagues, oversees each of these meetings and takes minutes to ensure proper minutes and notes are recorded, including donor involvement.
- They are allowed one collective vote - regardless of whether they are an individual, a family, or somehow a group - to ensure they cannot make up the majority of votes on their scholarship.
Hope this helps!
Steve Gottcent - stevegottcent@qccommunityfoundation.org
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About four years ago our Board agreed that scholarships produce low ROI and high workload, so they upped our minimum scholarship fund balance from $5,000 to $50,000 (no donor involvement) and $100,000 (for donor involvement). We charge 2% annual admin fee for scholarship funds. Of course, we grandfathered in the old scholarship funds. Since increasing the minimum scholarship fund balance, we've only opened one scholarship fund. (We offered an incentive to the older and smaller funds' fund contacts to change the scholarship fund to unrestricted. The 2:1 match increased the fund balance and they could keep the fund name. About 5% took us up on the offer.)
For the funds that have donor involvement, they may assign 1-3 reviewers, but the cofo's reviewers will always outnumber them by one, so we are compliant with 2006 HR4/Pension Protection Act.
Our Fund 411 is attached.
Sherri
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