Advice for Scholarships to Give

[Anonymous]

You are asking some very good questions.

I serve on the boards of 3 different family foundations and each of the 3 has some level of interest in supporting education topics. All 3 offer scholarships. 2 have endowed scholarship funds at specific institutions and we worked with the institutions to develop the scope and parameters for the scholarships. 1 has a hybrid model with some endowed scholarships at a few different institutions but we also have scholarships that we award directly to recipients (paid to the institution only!!!) and the awards are unaligned with any specific education institution.

While the endowed scholarships were front-heavy on work, they offer us the assurance that the process is equitable and fair. The independent scholarship process was virtually no work ahead of time but it is quite a bit of work to administer and we have paid staff to manage it. There are a lot of "I"s to dot and "T's to cross to ensure that the process is open, fair and nondiscriminatory. And we learned the hard way that there need to be safeguards in place to ensure that the money we award is spent according to the intent it was distributed.

Do you belong to any organizations that work with family foundations? The Council on Foundations has recourses for foundations and it my understanding that it even has group that has a list serve / message board on the topic of scholarships. Additionally I know there is a National Center for Family Philanthropy and BoardSource may be a big help to you with resources, especially their bookstore. You also may want to see if any of them have some local conferences where you could network with other family foundations on topics of mutual interest.

I hope this information is helpful. Post back if you have questions. I think you are getting a lot of good input from others! Good luck!

[Anonymous]

You would be surprised how much a small scholarship (even $500 or $1,000) can mean to someone attending community college. This is where you can find people struggling to make a better life for themselves, like the single mom going to school nights to get a technical or nursing degree to get a better-paying job and provide for her family. Your money will go a lot farther there than if you add a drop-in-the-bucket amount to a university’s multi-million dollar endowment. You would not believe the letters we have received gushing about how someone’s $1,000 scholarship changed their life.

[Anonymous]

Funding for people going to non-profit commuter schools (community colleges, lower-tier state schools) is probably the most bang for the buck/underserved population. That said, it’s hard to have a funding cycle that responds to one-time need unless you partner with a local school(s) who can identify students that are being forced out by circumstances where $2-4K would change whether they could stay in (or come back) to school.

The scholarship program I’m involved with provides continuing support (up to 4 years, within a six year period) contingent on FT enrollment (prorated $ for PT) and maintaining a 3.0 GPA. We found that $2K/year didn’t help much, so changed to $4K/year and are seeing better results (GPA/completion rates).

You might talk to FA officers at local schools and see where they perceive funding gaps/unmet needs to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do 2 $10,000 scholarships for students with high financial need attending HBCUs. I would want to fund students with a higher GPA 3.3+ but wouldn't look at SATs ( because they are less predictive of success in college and more predictive of family resources). I've seen several students this year who were high achievers who wanted to attend Howard, Morehouse, and Spellman respectively. But, HBCU tend to offer very little institutional aid.

This. And AA students are disproportionately affected by the educational debt crisis. I would focus on Hampton and other HBCUs in NC like Elizabeth City State and NC A&T.

[Anonymous]

Also, agree on no more than 4 recipients if you’re working with 20k.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about a summer before college transition scholarship for poor/homeless student? I think middle class students have buffers that help succeed even when paying for college is tight. The poor don’t have the experience to do well sometimes even if fully funded before they don’t know how to manage the expectations. Another thought that you might consider that is not a scholarship to individuals, but would still help many would be to fund a food pantry at a college associated with the donor/organization.

Questbridge already tries to fill some of that need. Many colleges also have "precollege" sessions for low income, URM students to come to the campus early and get enrichment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would do 5 $4K to spead it out.

I would do one 20k scholarship. And yes look at sat and act scores - why discount that achievement?
Look for middle class kids with special circumstances (special needs sibling? Handicapped parent? Handicapped student?) who are good, solid students and need a little help to attend a college that is a good fit for them.

[Anonymous]

I’d give it to a community college for emergency needs that are at risk of making students drop out.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/nyregion/at-college-where-alumni-pockets-are-shallow-a-struggle-to-raise-money.html