It is hard to imagine that 800 Chautauqua County high school and college students have just recently submitted their application materials to the Chautauqua Region Community Foundation in order to receive scholarship assistance. While the process may be over for the students, it has only just begun for the Community Foundation. Over the next few months, staff will sort applications, committees will meet, and awards will be made. The entire process is quite amazing.
To truly understand the work that goes into the scholarship process, each step must be viewed on its own accord. The first is from the staff perspective. After all applications are received online at www.crcfonline.org, Foundation staff reviews each application to make sure all the information has been completed. Each application is then electronically transferred from our website into a database. Within this database, each application is sorted, matching up students with funds they might qualify for.
This leads to the next step in the process, which is providing the scholarship committees with vast lists and applications of potential recipients, based on the electronic matching process. The committee members review each student individually and anonymously to determine who best fits with specific scholarship funds. After some deliberation, the committees make recommendations on who should receive awards, based on different fund criterion. While this sounds simple, these committee volunteers are giving countless hours of their time to review the applications, sit in meetings, and make objective decisions based on the information provided to them.
Additionally, to better understand the scope of this process, nearly 200 individuals volunteer to serve on scholarship committees. Their work begins in September and ends in early November, equaling three months’ time that each committee volunteer gives to make sure each student is evaluated properly and fairly. This process could not take place without volunteer dedication and support.
The final step in the process is the scholarship award recommendations are presented to the Community Foundation’s Board of Directors in November. When all is said and done scholarship awards will likely amount to over $900,000 in 2011.
Looking at the scholarship process as a whole demonstrates the care Foundation staff and volunteers have for area students and their futures. The Community Foundation knows the vital importance of education and tries to do all it can to give students every advantage possible. This is reflective of the months of work put into the process. The Chautauqua Region Community Foundation is proud of the effort of committee volunteers and Board members to make this all possible.
