Establishing a Scholarship Fund
Scholarship Program Guidelines

With your DAF, you may structure your own scholarship program to support young minds in your community, through athletic, academic, or community achievement. You may structure your scholarship program and support gifts to qualified recipients. You decide the community you wish to reach, define your public, establish criteria, and an objective selection committee (with our approval). Once you’ve established the program, you supervise the process and recommend, through your committee, scholarship grants to NHF.

Scholarship Program Requirements:

•  Public Criteria There must be public criteria that would differentiate one qualified applicant from another, and not limit the applicant by race, gender, or religion. For example, all graduating seniors from a local school system, meets the public criteria; whereas, applicants who are all part of the same family, does not.  The criteria must be disclosed to the public and the basis of the selection clearly defined.
  
  
• Sufficient Publicity There must be sufficient publicity so that a reasonable person might presume that the public listed above would know about the proposed award before it was made and have a chance to apply if qualified. It is required that you publicize the program in your community by contacting local newspapers or utilizing other public media. This can be by ads, radio, TV announcements, the Internet, bulletins, posted notices or flyers.
  
  
• Actual Competition There must be a bona fide attempt to have an actual competition. We need to know and have before us the applications for all those who were not selected as well as those who were selected.
  
  
• Selection Committee The selection committee should be made up of a group of objective individuals, who may not be related to any applicant by blood, marriage, adoption, employment, or business relationship, nor can they be a relative or spouse of the NHF Donor-Advisor. If you, as the Advisor, will serve on the committee, you must make up a minority position so that there are at least two other selectors unrelated to the Foundation on the committee. We need the names and addresses of the people on this Selection Committee.

Please complete the Scholarship Approval Form well before the scholarship program is conducted or announced. This will allow the Board of Directors at the National Heritage Foundation enough time to examine and approve the proposed Foundation Scholarship Program.

The approval form is currently only available via email. Please email jan@nhf.org and request it.