Scholarship Administration

Scholarship Administration

Documenting Scholarship Administration Procedures

Best Practice: Document Your Scholarship Administration Procedures
Maintain written documentation of your unit’s scholarship administration policies and procedures to include the following:

All positions involved in scholarship administration and their role in the process
Methods for awarding, including how the applicant pool is evaluated, the eligible students are evaluated, and the final recipient is selected
Award letter or email template the unit sends to the recipient(s) (if applicable)
How the scholarship fund is monitored and reconciled and the position responsible
Clear documentation of division of responsibility separating fundraising, financial administration, applicant review/ranking, scholarship processing

Advertising of Scholarships

Regardless of the method of advertising scholarships (AwardSpring or another application method), all scholarships must be advertised and evaluated directly according to the donor established fund purpose and only the criteria in the fund purpose. Criteria cannot be added from the fund purpose or deleted from the fund purpose.
Add all scholarships and criteria in AwardSpring (October) (Training provided by Fin Aid each October) directly. Include the donor established fund purpose directly from the Fund Data Form.
Promote through college’s social media channels
Promote through professors and academic advisors
Promote through student organizations or leadership societies in your college or unit
Utilize current students to share with their networks
Scholarship applications must be retained for a minimum of 5 years. Electronic retention of applications is recommended.

Best Practice: Advertising of Scholarships

All advertising for specific scholarship funds must include the fund purpose in accordance with the fund data form. Using the exact language of the fund purpose from the fund data form, which is taken exactly from the donor gift agreement. It is important to ensure awarding criteria are in compliance with donor intent.
Cross-reference all funds advertised in AwardSpring and all other areas utilized for advertising with the fund data form.

Spending Plan

Template

Pull a comprehensive list of all scholarship funds, fund balances, criteria (from Reporting Xpress - FunDriver Report).
Review funds and separate renewable, non-renewable and funds.
Financial Aid can award funds on your unit’s behalf if fund is only restricted on merit or need (or a combination) and has no terms and conditions or thank you letter requirement. Financial Aid will need a spending plan for each fund by early Fall for funds awarded through Financial Aid. Create spending plans in early September for the next academic year.
For other spending plans, review funds with returning students, confirm anticipated graduation date and renewal eligibility.
Create spending plans for each fund with the projected earnings for endowments.

Best Practice: Confirm Available Balances and Communicate with your Development Team

Review all available balances, and don’t award funding that isn’t available.
Ask about any new funds that are in process and awarding expectation (when will the funding be available to award).
Discuss any funds with open pledges that are expected prior to the awarding cycle.
Share the awarding timeline with your Development Team so they can plan stewardship efforts and donor/student meetings.
Discuss any funds that you have challenges with (fund purpose issues, etc).

Terms and Conditions and Thank You Letter Requirement

Sample

Review the terms and conditions associated with each fund code (through your OFA (Office of Financial Aid) Power BI Dashboard), and if updates need to be made, make them in January prior to funds being awarded for the following year. These can only be updated one time per year prior to scholarships being awarded for that year.
Review and evaluate the collection method for student thank you letters. Can you enhance this process to make it more accessible for students and staff? Review this process with your development colleagues.

Best Practice: Annual Financial Aid Fund Code (FA code) Review

Pull Fund Code Monitor Report annually (from your OFA Power BI Dashboard) to review all FA codes attached to your scholarship funds, T&C (terms and conditions), disbursement rules, and tyl (thank you letter) requirement. Cross-reference this list with fund data forms in the Foundation, confirming that the attributes attached to the FA code match the fund purpose.

Awarding in AwardSpring (with a committee)

This process is covered thoroughly by Financial Aid in annual training.

Confirm that your committee members have reviewer access in AwardSpring .
Communicate the timeline and process for application review.
When the application closes in AwardSpring, filter applicants or pull Financial Aid Report 127 when updated.
Evaluate your pool of candidates against the purpose of the fund. Do not add criteria to the evaluation and do not remove criteria from the evaluation.
Assign most eligible candidates to committee in AwardSpring (each committee member will have a unique login to view applicants assigned to them).
Send committee email with instructions and deadline for review of funds one week prior to the Financial Aid awarding deadline for each round of scholarships.
Review top rated candidates and re-review eligibility according to fund criteria.
Award/Deny in AwardSpring and send the notification e-mails to the students with the templates provided in AwardSpring.
Confirm available balances in the fund again before processing payment request forms.
Fill out payment request forms for each fund and send to the Foundation Business Office inbox (UA-FDNScholarshipRequests@usf.edu) by the established deadlines.
Send award emails from the college/unit once the funding has posted to the student account. This will expedite the thank you letter collection (if applicable). Sample Award Email

Best Practice: Document Your Committee’s Review Process Each Scholarship-awarding Cycle

Include:
- Name of all committee members
- Rubric utilized for review
- Documentation demonstrating committee’s selection of recipient
- Documents demonstrating eligibility of applicants and that applicant pool has been evaluated against the donor established fund purpose (from the Fund Data Form)
- Award letter send to the student, acceptance by the student, thank you letter submitted (if applicable)
Always have a backup list of recipients to award if the top candidate cannot accept the funding or doesn't enroll in classes
Keep documentation on file demonstrating that the selected recipient meets the fund purpose of the scholarship. All awards must be made in adherence to donor intent. Confirm that the recipient meets all aspects of the criteria, including specific class year, major and financial need (if applicable). Documentation of the evaluation of recipients must be retained for a minimum of 5 years. Electronic retention of applications is recommended.
If you have a fund purpose that is un-awardable as written, please work with the Foundation Fund Management in collaboration with the Foundation Scholarship Office and your development team to discuss updating the funds (with donor approval).
Verify your fund signers and their signing authority level
- Signers should be verified through Reporting Xpress**
- L3 — up to $1,000
- L2 — up to $25,000 (for scholarships only)
- L1 — anything above $25,000 (all amounts)

**Amounts listed above are per individual line item on the payment request form.

Reconciliation

Scholarship funds need to be reconciled to the detail and balances in the cash report to ensure that funding has processed for each recipient. Funds should be reviewed and reconciled each month.
Check all students on your payment request forms against students in the Scholarship Administration Application & ReportingXpress.
If students are not listed in the Scholarship Administration Application (and it has been 3 weeks since you have submitted payment request form) follow up to see why the scholarship has not been offered. You can also look at the individual’s student record in Banner Prod, and if not offered, follow up with Financial Aid.
If a student has been offered funding, but the funding has not disbursed (after drop/add), pull the Fund Code Monitor report (from your OFA Power BI Dashboard) to see why the funding hasn’t paid out. If the fund requires full-time enrollment, is the student enrolled full time? Have terms and conditions and thank you letter requirements been met (if applicable)? Is the student enrolled?
If the student is not enrolled and/or doesn’t meet the requirements of the scholarship, process a cancellation/reduction form.
If the student needs to submit terms and conditions and/or thank you letter, they will receive communication from Financial Aid. You can also contact the student if these items are preventing disbursement. Contacting the student directly will expedite the process.
In addition to confirming the scholarship funding has disbursed to the recipients, you will need to reconcile all monthly fund transactions.

Best Practice: Reconciliation

Save each monthly file from Reporting Xpress and reconcile all transactions. A reconciliation needs to include all deposits into the fund, and all transactions out of the fund, including a list of pending transactions (including student payments that haven’t disbursed).
- Reconciliation Resources are available on the Foundation Business SharePoint site using the key search word reconciliation.
- USF Foundation Reconciliation Guide for Fund Administrators
- Reconciliation Workshop
Document the person and position who is responsible for reconciliation. It is important that the fundraiser is never the person who reconciles funds.

New Fund Code Forms

Instructions & Sample Form

In order to award a Foundation scholarship fund, each new Foundation fund has to be assigned a Financial Aid Fund Code. The fund administrator will complete the form from the Financial Aid website and submit to the Foundation Scholarship Office for review. The fund will be reviewed for accuracy, signed and submitted to Financial Aid.

Best Practice: Keep Fund Codes Updated

If a change is made to any of the information that is attached to the Financial Aid Fund Code, an update fund code form is needed. Examples include full-time/part-time enrollment, financial need requirement, renewable/non-renewable status of the fund.
A fund code update form should always be submitted if you have an operating fund that is being converted to an endowed fund. The fund code (and prior recipients) will follow to the new endowed fund for reporting purposes.

Award vs. Scholarship

Scholarship: Paid through the student’s Oasis account to cover tuition and fees first. Scholarship criteria must be included with the gift agreement. Scholarships are to cover anything associated with a student's cost of attendance at USF.

Award: Paid via check to the student directly and can be subject to tax implications. An award is given typically based on a competitive process that is established and documented. Examples include elevator speech competitions, mock patient visits, etc.

Best Practice: Processing an Award

If you encounter a fund that appears to be an award vs. a scholarship, please contact the USF Business Office for the specialized awarding procedure.