The Development of an Equitable Scholarship Process

Tags: Collaborations, scholarship, workforce, Youth Development

Written by: Dana Crary, Community Impact Manager

With the cost of higher education growing exponentially each year, community scholarships can empower our local high school students to pursue their educational dreams. However, ensuring equity and inclusivity in scholarship management is crucial to the effectiveness of these awards.

This year, TTCF supported the administration of over $1.6M to 140 TTUSD high school seniors. Prioritizing our commitment to DEI, we aim to fill financial gaps by offering fair and impartial opportunities to all eligible applicants, regardless of their background, identity, or circumstances. This takes thoughtful consideration, and intentional design around each phase in our annual scholarship cycle. 

Removing Barriers and Developing Partners at the Schools

TTCF serves as a community leader in scholarship management by providing free access to our application software permitting students to apply in one place to over 200 community awards. Emphasizing transparency, our team has built resources in and out of the software to clearly outline eligibility criteria, application requirements, and timelines to ensure all applicants understand the expectations. We actively promote our scholarship opportunities through our social media channels and we host application workshops for high school seniors walking them through the process of how to apply online and answering their questions. We also partner closely with teachers, counselors, and organizations that work with our local youth to ensure information reaches those who might otherwise slip through the cracks.

Thoughtful Applications Reveal the Realities of Tahoe Truckee Students

Recognizing and addressing systemic barriers, our program is designed not only to support high achievers, but also to uplift those facing economic and social adversity. Students contributing to household expenses or family medical bills, providing caregiving responsibilities for siblings or parents, and those simply managing the household to support full-time working parents may not have the time and financial freedom to participate in extracurricular activities and volunteer opportunities. Some students in our community experience hardship by not having a reliable, safe and consistent home to return to each day where they can complete homework assignments or study for exams. For reasons like this, our application is designed to inquire beyond volunteer hours and clubs joined, but investigate how a student spends their time outside of the classroom and what resources are available to them. 

Assessing the Financial Needs of Students

There can be a lot of misunderstanding in our community about why some students receive multiple community awards, while other students don’t receive any. Once a scholarship’s baseline criteria has matched eligible candidates to specific awards, the TTCF committee uses holistic, need-based assessment to determine how each award can have the greatest impact possible for recipients.

Each year, students must apply to FAFSA, Free Application for Federal Student Aid, in order to apply for government grants and seek financial aid from their chosen schools. FAFSA will issue each student a Student Aid Index (SAI) number, which determines what their family is required to pay for college. Students will also research Cost of Attendance (COA) numbers from their chosen schools, which sum up all the expected annual expenses they will have including tuition, books and living expenses. To help meet these costs, students may qualify for federal Pell Grants, and Cal Grants from the state. Often students facing the same Cost of Attendance can have a wildly different Financial Gap, which is why need-based scholarships are so important and why TTCF prioritizes awarding students to fill this gap.

This year, 199 students applied to our community scholarship program requiring a total of over $4.5M to attend their schools of choice. Over 31 of those student applicants were determined by FAFSA to have had a negative SAI, which indicates the highest financial need possible. If a student is offered more community scholarship money than is needed in their specific financial gap, a school may reduce their Financial Aid. With the limited funding we have available to distribute, the TTCF volunteer committee must thread the needle in meeting a student’s need up to a certain point without going over. Each year, the TTCF volunteer committee dedicates countless hours determining award sizes in order to ensure our available funding is administered in the most effective way possible.

Using the example above, if the committee had $30,000 to award, dividing it evenly would result in Student A facing a $11,500 financial gap, and Student B losing their $10,000 school merit scholarship, thus limiting the overall impact of our funding. While Student A could utilize the additional $10,000, it would go unused for Student B. Therefore, we aim for a more equitable distribution, such as awarding $26,500 to Student A and $3,500 to Student B. Scenarios like this require our committee to make challenging decisions.

Volunteer Training: Inclusivity, Confidentiality, and Equitable Decision-Making

The TTCF volunteer review committee evaluates applicants holistically, taking into account personal essays, recommendation letters, and community involvement alongside academic achievements. Applicants are evaluated based on their potential and resilience, not just their GPA. Each year, we provide training for our volunteer committee members on implicit bias, and equitable decision-making practices. We share these training resources with the leaders of all of the independent committees using our software, encouraging them to implement this framework into their own review processes. 

In order to assure our committee members feel they can share their perspectives openly in our group, we implement the recently revived Speak Your Peace framework at our meetings which includes the tenets of Paying Attention, Listening, and Being Inclusive. Recognizing the importance of protecting students’ private information and treating everyone in our community with respect, we discuss confidentiality with our volunteers and the value of limiting comments to constructive points relevant to a student’s qualifications to a specific award.

Holistic Support for Students

Recognizing that true support extends beyond financial assistance, some of our scholarships include mentorship opportunities from donors who connect with recipients several times a year to nurture and support their growth and success throughout their educational journeys. Our program allows scholarship recipients to receive their awards at a pace that suits their needs. Students who experience life events that require them to pause their studies can request extensions on their scholarship payments. Additionally, those who need to pay tuition or invoices before the standard fall timeline can request expedited payments.

It Takes a Village

The scholarship process is deeply meaningful to the team and Board at TTCF, and we could not do it without “our village” supporting this process from beginning to end. 

We’d like to take a moment to thank:

• The donors providing reliable funding year-over-year to build these scholarships and help local youth achieve their dreams; 
• Our scholarship committee volunteers for the dedication, empathy, and thoughtfulness you bring to this process;
• The counselors and teachers who advocate for students and make sure they know about the financial opportunities available to them,;
• The letter of recommendation writers who sing a students’ praises and highlight qualities a student might not yet see in themselves;
• The parents investigating opportunities and championing their children’s educational dreams; and especially 
• The students themselves who take the time to complete their application with care and share so vulnerably and openly with us.

Each of these groups are key members in making a profound impact on the lives of our community’s students. TTCF is honored to be a part of this process and proud to support community collaboration that improves the quality of life in our region.

Inspired? Please consider a donation to TTCF’s Community Scholarship Fund to help us ensure more students receive the financial support they need to attend higher education. Donate Now.