As financial aid professionals, we know that helping students afford college is at the core of our mission. While institutional aid, federal loans, and grants are essential, many students still face significant funding gaps. One powerful way financial aid offices can support students is by guiding them along the process of finding, applying to, and securing external scholarships, internal scholarships from alumni donors, and employee-funded scholarship opportunities. As more and more students begin to see financial aid administrators as sources for support, here are five tips financial aid officials can take to proactively help students secure these critical resources.
1. Building and Maintaining a Scholarship Database
The first step is to create and maintain a comprehensive scholarship database. This database should include:
- Outside Scholarships: Scholarships offered by national organizations, local charities, community groups, and corporate sponsors
- Internal Scholarships: Opportunities funded by alumni, departments, or campus organizations
- Employee-Funded Scholarships: Initiatives where faculty, staff, or institutional employees pool resources to help students.
To keep the database current, encourage regular communication with these scholarship providers and subscribe to updates from scholarship search engines or platforms. Many public school systems, for example, have scholarship toolkits that they use, which are broadly available and which administrators can use to populate their own scholarship resource pages. For administrators who are passionate about serving and supporting unique student populations (e.g. undocumented students, LGBTQIA+, first-generation, indigenous students, etc.) having a list of available options that you have seen other students of similar identities leverage in the past can go a long way in preparing students to leverage sources they may not otherwise be aware of.
2. Training Staff to Be Scholarship Advisors
Often, students are unaware of the vast number of scholarships available to them. Financial aid staff can play a crucial role by becoming scholarship advisors themselves. This can involve:
- Hosting workshops that walk representatives through the steps they should take to help students through the process of finding and applying for legitimate scholarship opportunities.
- Creating step-by-step guides on how to write compelling personal statements, secure recommendation letters, and meet application deadlines.
- Offering personalized scholarship advising to match students with the opportunities best suited to their background, major, and career aspirations, while clarifying the expectation that scholarships should be earned, so that students avoid too-good-to-be-true scams.
Empowering staff to be proactive advisors, rather than passive administrators, makes a meaningful difference in helping students uncover financial support.
3. Communicating and Leveraging Alumni-Funded Scholarships
Many students are unaware that a number of institutional scholarships exist to assist continuing students with completing their educational journey at a specific school. A lot of these awards are only available to continuing students since endowment restrictions require that students commit to a major or have an established relationship with a specific department before the student is able to gain access to these funds. Oftentimes, these can also be some of the best sources for additional funding for students, since students are only competing with other students at their own institution to receive consideration for these awards. In these cases, financial aid officers have a responsibility to know what the application process is for these internal awards, and to make sure there is collaboration among offices to communicate these options to students as the application process begins. As such, financial aid advisors should:
- Identify and outline available internal funding scholarships for students.
- Clearly communicate when the application period is about to start, what the requirements for these awards might be, and when the application period is closing for consideration purposes.
- Inform students during advising that these options exist: Being transparent about what the requirements are for these funding options, what the correct department and application process looks like, and at what point these scholarships become available to students helps families prepare as they complete their 4-year planning and budgeting for assessing their college cost needs.
Separately, highlight the success stories of students who have benefited from these type of scholarships by hosting information sessions that might inspire students to know that these options are real and available to assist students like them.
4. Informing Students about Employee-Funded Benefits
Institutions should also encourage students to assess which employers around campus might offer employee-funded educational stipends or benefits. In many cases, these can be invaluable sources of support for unaccompanied youth or non-traditional students, who might be able to leverage their work needs with the possibility of earning additional support to cover their educational expenses. Separately, students should also be encouraged to work with their parents to assess whether the educational employee benefits their parent’s HR department might offer are transferable to students
5. Providing Ongoing Support and Follow-Up
Proactively assisting students with their scholarship search, application, and renewal needs can be invaluable as financial aid offices asses the type of programing they support for their students. To that end, some activities that might helpful to consider in order to ensure that students receive to-and-through support include:
- Scholarship Information Sessions: Have staff present on how students might be able to spot scams, find legitimate scholarship options, and work with organizations to begin their application process.
- Offer Scholarship Application Completion Stipends: Consider offering students small financial credits or benefits (between $25 and $50) as an incentive to complete and submit scholarship applications.
- Partner with External Scholarship Organizations: Conduct scholarship information sessions, or even host representatives from external scholarship organizations to present to students on how to be successful in completing the organization’s scholarship application.
- Provide Timely Communications: This is especially important around the topic of when an institution’s internal scholarship application portal or application window is open and available to students.
- Offer Renewal Counseling: Offer presentations later in the year to discuss the academic, enrollment, service, and reporting requirements that are typical required before students are able to receive renewals for the awards they have been offered.
By actively guiding students through the scholarship application process, leveraging institutional and employer options, and creating a culture of support, financial aid offices can make a tremendous impact in assisting students’ secure supplemental aid. Scholarships—whether from external organizations, alumni, or employee sources—are a vital component in bridging the gap for students who might otherwise struggle to finance their education.
As financial aid professionals, the unique opportunity to play a pivotal role in helping students graduate with less debt and more opportunity for success. If you would like to discuss how to execute on these initiatives or would like assistance with a training on this topic, contact our team of expert advisors at info@heag.us for support.