This is the final article in a 3 part series. If you missed Part One, read it here.
Scholarship seekers have a lot to worry about when it comes to scholarships. Yet, scholarship providers, too, have a couple of things to think about with their scholarships. Most importantly, scholarship providers must ask themselves what impact their scholarships will have.
Read on to find out how to make and measure the impact your scholarship will have on the lives of its recipients.
Identify Appropriate Recipients
Asking the right questions is one step forward towards making an impact with your scholarship. What qualities do you want to reward? This question can help you list the student characteristics your scholarship regards as critical.
- What identification information do you need from the awardees?
- What academic qualifications should the awardees have?
- What activities do you want to reward? Do you prefer students who excel in sports or other non-academic activities?
- What financial needs should your awardees have?
- Do You Need a Personal Essay?
These simple questions should be your background. Yet, depending on your specific areas of interest and target recipients, you can adjust these goals accordingly. Also, identify the interrelationships between your factors of consideration.
For instance, some financially needy students may not be suitable for academic performance. Some students who shine in outdoor and extracurricular activities may not have good academic performance. So, narrow down and have your bare minimum for an awardee with all your considerations under control.
And, if you’re offering a college scholarship or an MBA scholarship, you’d want to test your awardees’ readiness for college. This can help you identify individuals who are serious about furthering their academics. It can help you eliminate awardees who simply want to joy-ride on free scholarships.
Also, decide which extracurricular excellence you’d want to award. But, this alone may attract hundreds of applicants, giving you a difficult time filtering them. So, you could be specific about a sport and seek to know what inspires that awardee to better themselves in that activity.
Inquire about their future goals and the impact of their sports excellence on the community. Likewise, when you’re choosing financially needy students, have considerations. These students may not have academic excellence but may have leadership skills.
And, for the personal essays, they are a more direct test with fewer accompanying factors to consider. So, ensure you get everything you need to learn about a student from this essay.
Gauge the applicants’ goals, persistence, and seriousness with the scholarship. These factors are equally important. They can help students succeed in their future education programs.
Also, they can make your selection easier. Furthermore, you can make this more real by asking them to accompany videos or personal confessions. Or, you can interview your awardees. to get to understand their qualities more personally.
What Do You Want to Deliver?
Define the amount of financial support you’d offer your applicants. Do some research on some of the colleges you’d love them to study at. Be clear whether you’ll strictly offer tuition fees or you’ll cater for living expenses.
Also, consider the taxes that accompany different funds. For instance, living expenses often attract taxes. Be sure about whether your scholarship will be one-time, renewable, or throughout college.
Furthermore, you must set guidelines for this financial support. Will you allow students to transfer from one college to another? Will you support college studies that take up to five years
Think about what else your scholarship program can entail. Will you offer online support to help your awardees interact and share their experiences? Will you fund peer connections during holidays?
Cultural and social impacts are as critical as financial support. Mentorship forums and on-campus social programs are also excellent strategies. They can help you make a social impact in the lives of your awardees.
Finally, a good scholarship program is comprehensive of social capital, financial capital, and cultural capital. These components equally shape the lives of your awardees.
What’s Next?
Scholarship management services like Scholar’s App make it easy for donors to reach out to connect with potential scholarship recipients. Compared to traditional means of advertising scholarships, by listing available scholarships on Scholars App, scholarship donors can make their scholarships far more visible to their target students, making an even greater impact. Create a free donor account today!