As the Special Events & Stewardship Coordinator at a small, Catholic college, effectively stewarding hundreds of scholarship funds, which are awarded to nearly 600 students, can be a challenging and sometimes daunting task.  Expectations are high, and rightfully so -- as anyone in the industry knows, managing those funds entrusted in our care must be appropriately and accurately awarded to the institution's neediest students on behalf of the institution's most generous benefactors.  Expending the available funds each year is not only good stewardship, but it helps lower the institution's discount rate and, of course, aids the students.  However, with so many moving pieces, details, and various departments' incongruous timelines, how does a staff of one tackle issues and challenges that inevitably but unpredictably arise each year, in addition to managing the day-to-day, month-to-month stewardship of the institution's scholarship funds?  

If this article piqued your interest and you're asking these questions, odds are you are a small shop, which means you have little-to-no time to spare to read lengthy articles.  Keeping that in mind, here is a quick cheat sheet of tips and tricks for leveraging the work, processes, and help of others for scholarship stewardship success.

Make Friends

What departments oversee the funds' growth, expenditures, etc.?  Odds are there's a Finance department of some sort that can see this information.  Depending on the platform/database your department and institution use, you may not have access to all of the available information you need to best oversee and manage the scholarship funds.  Also, if you are not the person awarding the funds to students, who is?  If you’re like my institution, that person is housed in our Student Financial Assistance Office.  Get to know these people -- yes, even meet them for coffee -- because these stakeholders can help your scholarship stewardship go much more smoothly if you establish a good working relationship and communication.  Think of them as part of your team.  Your team’s goal is to award scholarships accurately and timely.

Another friend I’ve made is the person who manages our database.  She has been instrumental in gaining access to information I never had before and has also created reports that have streamlined reporting to donors.  The latter can certainly take time, but if you are both committed to being team players and creating efficiencies, it is time well-invested.

Get Together

Once you know who the stakeholders are in the awarding of scholarships, take the initiative and set-up meetings as these counterparts are your team.  Depending on how efficient each department’s processes are, you might need to convene several times in the first few months as you gear up for the scholarship awarding, but once you’ve become a well-oiled machine, these meetings will become less frequent (but still crucial and beneficial!).

Timing Is Everything

When meeting and communicating with your team (again, in my case, Finance and Student Financial Assistance), find out what their important deadlines and timelines are.  When do they begin awarding the restricted and endowed scholarships?  Can their timeline for that process budge?  When does Finance expect to have audited numbers after the close of the fiscal year? 

Share with them the deadline your scholarship reports to benefactors need to drop in the mail.  Be sure to know how long it will take you to notify and receive thank you letters from the students and work backwards from the mail drop date -- share with these offices the date you comfortably need a list of scholarship recipients for thank you letter notification purposes. 

Take the departments’ dates and deadlines and plot them in a linear fashion.  Share the timeline with your team and give everyone the opportunity to review and provide feedback.  Having this visual on one page (hopefully) will serve as a great, easy reminder to everyone as to which piece each person or department is responsible for and holds everyone accountable to deadlines.

“To Err Is Human”

Mistakes happen.  If you aren’t already doing it, start checking the scholarship awards as your financial services counterpart begins the awarding process and continue to check the awards throughout the process.  Although this will take up a lot of your time, you will find that it is a lot easier to fix awarding errors early in the process versus discovering them as you’re compiling the reports to benefactors.

Cheat Sheet (uhh, binder)

As the number of scholarship funds grow, it can be a lot to keep track of each fund’s restrictions as you check the awards.  You likely have files for each fund with a fund agreement.  Assuming the database program you use doesn’t “talk” to the other departments regarding each fund’s restrictions, make copies of the fund agreements and file them alphabetically in a binder not just for you, but a binder for each member of your team, too.  As new funds are established, share the fund agreements with your team members so that they can file a copy into the binder.  Having this binder and communication process in place will significantly minimize the margin of error since all parties will be well informed.

These are just a handful of tips and tricks for working with others to help your small shop get through the sometimes overwhelming task of scholarship stewardship.  To further discuss these tips and tricks or to explore other areas of concern, feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Kimberly Wheeler
Special Events & Stewardship Coordinator
Stonehill College

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