End-to-End Scholarship Administration for Community Foundations

Scholarship America’s mission is to make scholarship management easy for our partners—and our collaborations with community foundations are a perfect example. We help community foundations amplify student impact, turn DAF funds into scholarship dollars, exceed donor expectations, and maximize their capacity to serve their stakeholders and achieve their missions.

A Study in Success

Every year, Scholarship America helps community foundations distribute more than $14 million in scholarship funds—and that includes the Pittsburgh Foundation and The Community Foundation of Westmoreland County, who jointly administer one of the nation’s most robust rosters of foundation-led scholarship programs. Scholarship America manages 100+ of these unique awards, distributing $900K+ annually, reducing financial barriers and increasing educational access for local undergraduate, graduate, and vocational students.

Once students applied for these programs, our free Scholarship America Hub offered tailored recommendations, helping them discover other sponsors’ scholarship programs they would not have otherwise found.

By amplifying applicants’ access to other programs on the Hub, we enabled these students to receive an additional 528 scholarships. The awards totaled $2.9 million, effectively supporting both community foundations in their mission to help local students gain higher education while reducing educational debt.

“Through our partnership with Scholarship America, we are advancing our mission of enabling economic mobility for students from all backgrounds by providing resources to access and afford higher education,” says Ashley Hezel, Director of Operations at The Pittsburgh Foundation. “The organization’s expertise and flexible solutions have empowered our donors to make a more profound impact.”

The Unique Challenges of Community Scholarships

Like The Pittsburgh Foundation, your organization knows the challenge of managing unique programs, services and populations. The strict regulations and specialized landscape of the scholarship and financial aid world can mean added complications.

As the nation’s leading nonprofit scholarship administrator, Scholarship America is the expert in end-to-end program fulfillment. We take care of the administrative tasks, ensuring our partners’ scholarships are efficient and compliant—and that day-to-day scholarship management doesn’t take time or resources away from mission-critical work.

More than 30 community foundations rely on Scholarship America for:

• Scholarship Administration Services: We handle everything from design to fund disbursement and renewals, freeing up your team to focus on other priorities.
• Using Donor Advised Funds to Set Up Scholarships: We make it easy for your donors to set up new programs that are compliant and can be funded through their DAFs.
• Scholarship Promotion & Student Matching: We boost student awareness and applications through co-branding and strategic, tailored marketing outreach to your target audience. We also match applicants to other programs, amplifying their access to support.
• Student Sourcing: Our high-traffic online channels and expertise in student outreach maximize accessibility, connecting with eligible applicants and getting funds to the students you want to support.
• Amplified Student Opportunities: After applying for your program, students will be exposed to hundreds of additional scholarship programs and may apply for more funds to further support their journey.

Scholarship America’s program sponsors are empowered to be as hands-on or as hands-off as you want to be. If you’re seeking an end-to-end solution, we will make it happen; if your organizations wants to be highly involved in selection and distribution, the choice is yours.

Either way, we’ll help you keep donors engaged and interested in continued funding with transparent program reporting and impactful stories of student success—and our commitment to rigorous reporting and analysis means finding opportunities to do even more, year after year.

If your community foundation is ready to create or enhance your presence in the scholarship world, click below to get in touch.