The Scholarship Process at the Huntington County Community Foundation

As we announce the recipients of our 2022 scholarships, we thought it would be a good time to review our scholarship process.  Though there are some similarities between the Lilly Endowment process that occurs in the fall, the spring process is handled slightly differently.  As a foundation, we administer over 70 different scholarships, established by donors with different criteria.

The online application process is open for approximately two months before the final deadline. After the applications are submitted, the software system automatically assigns applications to the qualified scholarships.  For instance, some scholarships are only available to Huntington North graduates or Huntington County residents, so applicants from other schools or counties would be excluded from those scholarships.

Several of our scholarships are donor advised, meaning the donor or their designated appointee is heavily involved in the decision-making process.   Individuals or committees are provided with qualified applicants for their respective scholarships.  They make their selection(s) and work with our scholarship committee to make a final selection.

For the scholarships that aren’t donor-advised, the scholarship committee is given the opportunity to review the applications for each scholarship.  Before meeting together, the committee members individually review the applications and submit scores for each potential recipient.  When the committee meets together, they review their cumulative average scores.  For some scholarships, there is a clear consensus on who are the most deserving applicants.  For others, there is discussion until there is consensus.

The foundation staff help administer the scholarship process but have no active role in the selection or decision-making process.  All applicants are notified via email when the decision is made.  They can log back into the same system to which they applied and see which scholarships they received (if any). They are assigned specific follow-up tasks, including providing the foundation with their student identification number, to ensure that scholarship funds can be applied correctly.   After the committee has given its recommendations, the scholarship decisions are approved by the board.