Our scholarship application process opens on November 1st each year, so starting mid-October we’ll contact the counselors at each high school to let them know which scholarships are available from the PPS Foundation and ask them to encourage students who fit the criteria to apply. These scholarships are then included on their school scholarship website. Throughout the scholarship season we periodically ask the PPS high school principals to include the PPS Foundation scholarships information on the weekly Sunday phone call/e-mail, which is great advertisement since this goes directly to parents too. Our PPS high schools definitely do a great job helping us promoting the scholarships we have available.
As long as we have a detailed scholarship agreement, we can set up the scholarship application how you would like, chose the members of the evaluation committee, then just report out to you when we select a recipient. If you’d like to be more involved, we can have you and your group be a part of the scholarship committee and help evaluate the applications to choose a recipient. We would just need to make sure there are no conflict of interest of any group members if they would like to be on the evaluation committee (they might know an applicant or their family, etc).
Typically, we do ask that the group setting up the scholarship raises the funds for the award. We can help by creating an online donation link and sharing the fundraising effort on our website, social media, newsletter, etc. However, we do need the amount that the recipient is awarded raised by May 1st of the year that you are offering the scholarship. If you fundraise an amount over $10,000, we can also help invest those funds at the Community Foundation of Central Illinois if you would like.
Yes! We actually don’t need the check right away as long as we have an understanding that your group will be fundraising, and we will have the award funds available by May 1st of the year that the recipient is selected. Besides that, here is the criteria that is needed to start a scholarship agreement:
We will update the scholarship committee group as much as you’d like (on a weekly/monthly basis or when you hit a certain threshold). Just let us know! We keep very detailed accounting records that include the donor’s name, address, date and type of donation. We ensure that these funds will be restricted for the scholarship that you are raising money for. We will also send out donation receipts to all donors and let you know their address if you’d like to send an additional thank you card.
If you’d like to endow a scholarship, we would have you work with the Community Foundation of Central Illinois (CFCI) to invest those funds. The PPS Foundation can still administer the scholarship, but the funds would be held at CFCI. For a $1,000 scholarship award, they need at least $20,000 invested and they typically do not recommended giving out an award for at least one year to allow the funds to grow. We can get you in touch with staff members at CFCI to provide more information on this.
Whatever you'd like! Holding your funds at the PPS Foundation will provide you with flexibility. We can give out a one-time scholarship award or $1,000 each year for 5 years.
Yes, we update that document each year so we would definitely add your scholarship to the list for the year that it is offered.
We hope this has been helpful. Feel free to reach out to Jen Adler at jennifer.adler@psd150.org with any additional questions you may have or to start the process of creating a scholarship with the PPS Foundation.