Scholarship Funds are one of the best ways to impact the lives of people as there are a lot of them in financial need. It is a funding meant to address the financial needs of people, most especially the students.
Scholarship funding can be established by any donor with a need to assist people, be it an individual, an organization, or even the government. If you haven’t created one before, you may have to read this article to comprehend the recommended process to help you scale through.
With a few right steps, one can be able to start a good scholarship fund that can change lives globally.
What Is A Scholarship Fund?
A scholarship fund is a type of funding that is established to financially assist scholars in different fields. It mustn’t be one that must cater to the whole needs of students, but one that can assist with solving their needs.
People may be led to start a scholarship fund based on different motives, either to assist students, honor a loved one, give back to society, or of a different motive.
Steps To Starting A Scholarship Fund
1. Draft A Budget
Many have backed out from creating a scholarship fund due to the misconception that it requires a whole lot to start a scholarship fund. While this may be true in some aspects, especially if you aim to create an endowed scholarship at a particular school, they may request a huge sum to carry it out.
In a situation where your budget is minimal, you can work with a scholarship management service. This service accepts as little as a $500 scholarship, some charge administrative fees while some don’t. After considering all these, put on a budget that you intend to use to run the scholarship funds, it may be a $500 reward scholarship or even more.
A nonprofit scholarship can cost you not less than $5,000, that’s if you are interested in one. The amount is so due to other costs that follow, such as legal fees, website costs, advertising fees, and even the scholarship amount.
2. Consider The Aims/Goals
At this point you have concluded on a budget, another step to take is to note out the goals or mission of the scholarship. It must answer this question of who the scholarship is meant to assist, or why the scholarship is established.
Your aim or goal can be to assist students from poor backgrounds, talented students, first-generation students, etc. The goals you drafted to accomplish with your budget are what you will be working towards.
3. Choose The Criteria/Requirements For Eligibility.
Since you have made a budget, and drafted your goals, you can go on to choose the criteria you want the applicants to meet before being granted a scholarship fund.
The criteria may be required to assist students who have attained a particular educational level, demographic criteria, academic performance, and submission information (essay, video, etc).
These criteria/requirements are chosen by the scholarship goals, there shouldn’t be a contrast between each other.
4. Create Your Paperwork
At this juncture, you are to choose how to create your scholarship fund. There are three ways to make it happen, which is either to create as a nonprofit organization, as an endowed scholarship with a school, or through scholarship management service.
These three are of different requirements and steps, the most expensive is the nonprofit organization, followed by an endowed scholarship, and then the scholarship management service.
Scholarship management is the easiest and cheapest to go with, there are many scholarship management services to go for, such as Bold.org, which is free to use, you have to create an account as a donor and reach out to them on other steps to follow.
5. Establish The Scholarship
Time to make it happen, head over to bold.org or another scholarship management service, create a donor profile, and get verified.
After you have been verified, create a proposal, which afterward, the team that reaches out to you, schedules a call to access more information from you which is the donor.
After your proposal has been thoroughly revised and finalized, you can go on to fund your scholarship. At a maximum of an hour, the scholarship fund will be live on bold.org.
It can then be easily found and accessed by students through their scholarship search feature.
6. Advertise and Promote The Scholarship
For your scholarship to be known to the public, you have to publicize it in different ways.
You can choose to share through social media or reach out to schools and student organizations to notify them of the scholarship.
7. Choose and Award The Winners
This is after they must have applied and the scholarship deadline has passed.
You can review applications submitted to filter those that meet the scholarship criteria from the ones that don’t, it is a point where the best of them are chosen.
After you have chosen the deserved winners, you can reach out to the scholarship management service you used, to help you notify the students that won to award them.
Conclusion
Starting a scholarship fund is a very wonderful thing to do as it assists the students achieve their dream, with these outlined steps, starting a scholarship fund won’t be a difficult task.
Just ensure that you work towards your goal, set criteria, and other necessary processes.
It takes time to start, but the result and mission are worth the time, it leaves a legacy with a great impact on society.
