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Facts About
Scholarship America

• Charity Navigator, the nation's premier evaluator of non-profit organizations, has put Scholarship America in its top-ten list of "Slam-Dunk Charities," for fiscal health and responsibility to donors.

• Scholarship America has raised more than $108 million for this fund. Approximately $20 million more has been committed by major donors.

• As of November 2007, a total of 1,352 families had registered with the fund, representing 4,792 individuals.

•As of the same date, Scholarship America had distributed scholarships to nearly 900 people, totaling more than $23 million.

• Scholarship America has kept administrative expenses for family registration, evaluation and issuing awards to 4 percent of total disbursements since 2001. Our expenses for support and fundraising since inception have been $1,589,000 for this $108 million fund, or 1.5% in an industry where administrative costs of 20% are well within the norm.
Overview: Financial Need Formula
The Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund uses well established, commonly accepted financial need criteria to calculate the level of scholarship support granted to eligible students. Unlike most scholarship funds that are based on financial need, the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund uses a liberal formula, to ensure that the Fund covers as much of the need for as many of the eligible students as possible.

The “industry standard” in this case is the financial need formula established by the federal student loan program, which Scholarship America has modified for the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund to allow greater access to assistance. For this reason, while the standard formula considers a wide range of income and assets in determining financial need, the Families of Freedom Scholarship Fund does not consider:

  • Nontaxable income
  • 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund assets
  • Retirement funds
  • The value of family residence
  • Student earnings

Moreover, the first $500,000 of assets (cash, checking, savings and cash value of stocks) is ignored in the financial needs calculation. However, interest income from the Victim Compensation Fund awards that families have invested are included in the calculation, as it is not always possible to separate this investment income from the rest of the interest income that people report on their tax returns. Furthermore, the purpose of the Fund is to provide for an entire generation of financially needy students who, absent this Fund, may not have the financial resources needed to attend a postsecondary institution – a population that numbers in the thousands. If all investment income were excluded from the needs assessment, future generations of financially needy students would receive substantially less help from this scholarship fund.
Amanda Costello is a junior at Marymount Manhattan College majoring in communication arts. Her father worked at Thyssen Krupp Elevator near the World Trade Center; he entered the building to try to help others. The year before 9/11 he had realized his dream when Amanda became the first in her family to attend college. Read more




 
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