Setting Up a Scholarship

Maybe you or someone you know had particular difficulty getting a college education and you feel the pressure of funding was a big part of it, or perhaps distracted you from addressing other issues involved in moving on to college. Now you are in a position to make a difference in a young person’s life- someone in a similar situation, most likely. Someone who, with a little financial aid, particularly the free kind they won’t have to repay, could become successful and maybe help others and so forth. That, or maybe you are just really kind and wealthy and have no idea who to help with all the money you’ve earned or inherited, but you think helping people learn would be a good place to invest your time and monetary resources. A scholarship seems like a great idea, but how do you set it up?

Setting up a scholarship is not terribly difficult, and there are a few general guidelines with which we can provide you, but you may need to consult an attorney, an accountant, or maybe both, for setting up the actual "foundation" that will offer the scholarship itself. Here are some tips to get you started:

• Who?

  First, figure out who your target demographic is. Does he/she need to be a good student? Implement a GPA requirement. Are you targeting only people who declare a specific major? Must your target student be in a particular grade to qualify? Is there a particular region from which this student must come? Think it through thoroughly and make a bulleted list of all the criteria.

• What?

  What are you offering to this student or students? Money? Free airfare and/or lodging for someone wanting to study abroad, perhaps? Figure this part out and then you can decide how many awards you or the fund you’ve established can afford to dole out each year.

• When?

  Most scholarships tend to have a deadline no later than April and begin taking applications no earlier than January of each year. Also, you should take into consideration the importance of the efficiency of the presentation of the award once the awardees have been selected. You will need time to process all the applications and judge them and then distribute the awards. You probably don’t want to do this last any later than August, since most students will begin school in September, so give yourself ample time to properly review the applications of all those who qualify and took the time to apply.

Of course, once you have worked all of this out and established the scholarship, knowing the answers to all the most important questions like how much you are giving and who may qualify, you should go to Scholarships.com to submit your scholarship so that it can be listed and accurately filtered by our database and presented only to those who qualify