About Dreamkeepers

Unexpected financial emergencies are reported as one of the top reasons community college students drop out of school. Dreamkeepers is helping to change that by providing financial assistance to students faced with short-term financial emergencies.

Dreamkeepers helps community colleges achieve their goal of retaining and graduating students by providing financial assistance to those who might otherwise be forced to leave school because of an unexpected financial emergency. Dreamkeepers also provides students with financial planning tools and other resources that help them reach their educational and life goals.

The program was established by Lumina Foundation for Education in 2004; they chose Scholarhsip America to administer Dreamkeepers. It was originally piloted at 11 schools, and funding from the Walmart Foundation in 2008 added seven more. Since 2004, nearly $1.1 million in financial assistance has been provided to more than 2,500 students in 18 schools.

The average Dreamkeepers grant is $523; the most common uses are housing, utilities, meals, transportation, car repairs and child care. And while community colleges across the nation average a fifty-five percent re-enrollment/graduation rate, for the 2008-09 academic year, 84 percent of Dreamkeepers recipients were still in school the following semester.

Continued funding by Lumina and Walmart, along with a generous grant from the Kresge Foundation, has brought the Dreamkeepers program to 14 more schools this year. Visit Dreamkeepers.org to learn more.