Financial aid and advancement

I recently attended the annual scholarship luncheon at my alma mater, a wonderful stewardship event that brings together donors and student recipients of funded scholarships, both annual and endowed.

Listening to students talk about the importance of these awards got me thinking about the importance of collaboration between the offices of financial aid and advancement. In our visits to campuses, my colleagues and I at Scannell & Kurz observe considerable variation in how well advancement and financial aid work together for the mutual benefit of institutional strategic goals.

There tends to be commonality across institutions, both public and private, about the trouble spots that crop up, and the issues are often interrelated. Here are just a few:

• Advancement expresses concern that scholarships are not awarded on a timely basis, or that some funds go unawarded. This can cause difficulties with donor stewardship. Timely notification by the budget office about available fund balances is key here. Even though final budget balances for an upcoming fiscal year may not be nailed down by the time financial aid packaging takes place in February/March, reasonable estimates based on past history should be available and sufficient for this purpose. Unawarded funds may be due to lack of attention to detail in the financial aid office, which can and should be addressed, or because the scholarship criteria are so restrictive that an institution has no viable candidates. In the latter case, financial aid and advancement personnel need to discuss appropriate alternatives to ensure that overly restrictive criteria be removed so that funds are available to spend.
• Financial aid feels that the selection committees/departments don’t meet in a timely fashion for awards to be coordinated with aid packaging and influence enrollment behavior. Some donors require selection committees. While it may be more efficient to have the funds awarded centrally through a scholarship or financial aid office, the reality is that committees may be part of the puzzle. Coordinating the timing so that funds are used in the most strategic way possible is the joint responsibility of financial aid and advancement. Gift officers also must play an important role in working with donors to both meet the donors’ wishes and make every effort to suggest selection criteria that are not administratively onerous.
• Advancement wants to require that student recipients of funded awards write letters of acknowledgment to donors. As a practical matter, it is unreasonable to revoke scholarship funds when students don’t take the time to write a thank-you note. Granted, it is discouraging when attempts fail to have recipients write even a brief note of gratitude. And even in the best of circumstances, coordination of this effort takes time. Institutions that are most successful with high rates of acknowledgment begin by setting the expectation early, as soon as the funded award is offered. This should be introduced and then reinforced by the financial aid office, rather than having the student first hear about the expectation from advancement, which may cause students to remark, “…some random person in some random office just asked me to…..” The goal for the student experience is that it will be so meaningful and positive that it encourages them to be future donors.

The bottom line is that financial aid and advancement must collaborate to ensure that funded scholarships are used to meet the strategic goals of the institution. What suggestions do you have? Please feel free to leave them in the comments.

Watch for an upcoming article in University Business in which my colleague, Michael Sapienza, goes into more detail about the necessary collaboration between enrollment and advancement. In addition, we will be producing a white paper about various office collaborations in the second half of 2015. If you would like to receive it and other papers from us and our parent division, Ruffalo Noel Levitz, please sign up to receive those notices.

I also am happy to discuss ways you can facilitate collaboration between financial aid and advancement. Please email me and we can have a conversation about strategies for reaching your objectives.