Four Common Scholarship Problems - And How to Fix Them
Scholarship programs are complicated. They involve many varied activities, which often take place over a very compressed timeline. It’s a juggling act for scholarship staff, one that can cause stress for even the most seasoned professional.
Fortunately there are field-tested solutions to providers’ common challenges. Here’s a roundup of ideas for you to test and try.
Negative Scholarship Displacement
Include a field on applications and scholarship acceptance forms explaining displacement, then ask students to acknowledge understanding.
Download and edit our displacement slide deck, then link to it on your application or acceptance form, your website, or in your socials. Or share the recording we did for Cape Cod Foundation on scholarship displacement.
Adjust your scholarships calendar so that you can select recipients and notify them of awards well before the May 1 Decision Day. This helps them with their financial aid calculations, which help them with final school decisions.
Inform colleges and universities how to handle your award in cases of displacement in communications shared with award payments. Be explicit.
Expand what your scholarship can cover to include all items—room, board, transportation, and more—in schools' Cost of Attendance. Remember that in recent years, according to the College Board, non-tuition costs account for anywhere between 40-70 percent of college costs.
Allow them to defer their funding to use in future years. Include a deferment policy in your Scholarship Awarding Policy document (include this policy in your scholarship acceptance form).
Allow funding use for January term, summer term, study abroad, or other education-related experiences. (Also include in your Scholarship Awarding Policy document.)
Let students request specific amounts from you instead of sending set amounts to institutions.
Pay students directly. (Be aware of tax liabilities for students.)
Set up a student loan repayment program.
When Awards Go Unused
Develop a comprehensive fund and award tracking tool. This could be as simple as a spreadsheet with rows for each fund/award and columns for application, selection, and awarding criteria.
For each fund/award, determine which haven’t been given out consistently over the past five years.
Create a general, pooled fund to move some of those awards to. Its criteria can target your community's high-priority student population—those for whom your scholarship would impact college attendance and persistence.
Determine which funds should:
Join the pooled fund
Become designated funds
Sunset (with an established timeline)—consider accelerated giving of more awards or greater amounts
Be fully awarded next cycle
Transfer to better-fit entities like public school foundations
Have necessary conversations with donors, using your spreadsheet and data. Remember that they share your goal of using charitable dollars for student success.
Understanding Student Experience and Impact
Add these questions to your application form:
“How long did it take you to complete this application?”
"Which aspects of this application were most challenging to complete?"
“What do you most need help with as you plan for college?”
Offer students $25 gift cards to test application forms and provide feedback.
Add these questions to your scholarship acceptance forms:
"What are your biggest challenges in planning for and attending college?"
"What resources would help your educational success?"
Add these questions to a survey for after they’ve been awarded:
"Did this scholarship help you?"
"What can we do differently, to better support students like you?"
"What would you tell others about your experience working with us?"
Convene a focus group of six or eight recipients. Pay them with $50 gift cards and ask them open-ended questions about their experiences with your program and as students today.
Managing Peak Scholarship Season Demands
Establish one clear scholarship program purpose as your North Star. This will help you make nearly all strategic and administrative decisions more quickly and with greater ease.
Develop a program calendar, and use it year after year. Share it internally and externally.
Create a comprehensive Scholarships Handbook. Use it as a guide to what you do and how you do it.
Be transparent with new scholarships staff about seasonal workload expectations, and with other staff about what’s possible and what’s difficult during scholarships season.
Cross-train other team members to support scholarships staff during peak periods.
Create a Frequently Asked Questions resource to preempt common questions from students or volunteers. This might be a chatbot (that you work with a student to develop…?).
Standardize processes. For example, use only one application, one disbursement method, and one new donor form, not multiple approaches for varied scenarios. Document your processes in your Scholarship Handbook and your Scholarship Awarding Policy.
Communicate early and often to stakeholders, including students and volunteers. Share about activities, milestones, and deadlines. Repeat it seven times for retention.
Integrate scholarship technology with other organizational systems, like your CRM and financial management solution. Talk to your scholarship management platform and other vendors to determine how to do this.
These solutions can transform how your scholarship program operates and increase its impact on students. Want personalized guidance on implementing these changes? Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with our team to discuss your program's specific challenges.
