Creating Scholarship Opportunities for Undocumented Students
July 11, 2024
Undocumented Community of Practice
Today’s Agenda
Laura Bohórquez García
Co-Facilitator
Ivana Lopez Espinosa
Co-Facilitator
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Housekeeping and Reminders
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Overview of the Undocumented Community of Practice
Survey - Urgent Topic of Interest
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Meeting Goals
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What is D3 and Resources
The Biden-Harris Administration announced vital affirmative relief policies to protect long-term residents, including Dreamers, amidst legal challenges to DACA and Congressional stalemate.
One action is to provide clarifying guidance on the D-3 waiver and streamline access to employment-based visas for eligible DACA recipients and other Dreamers.
Resource:
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Picture Time!
Please turn your camera on if you are comfortable.
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Setting the Scene
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Today’s Speakers
Cindy Gil
Director of Latino Affairs,
Office of Community Engagement,
Indiana University Indianapolis
Karina Garduño
Director, Multicultural Center
Indiana University Indianapolis
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What happened at Indiana University Indianapolis?
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Opportunity to Dream Scholarship
The Opportunity to Dream Scholarship is designed to support undergraduate students who are ineligible to apply for and receive institutional, state and federal financial aid, are close to graduation, and have demonstrated financial need as determined by the Office of Student Financial Services. The recipient can receive up to $2500 for the academic year.
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Key Players
Planning and Implementation Team
Funders
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Lessons Learned
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10 minute Q & A
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Breakout Group - 10 mins
Make sure to introduce yourselves if you have not met before!
Task: Create a key stakeholders and next steps that you could take to implement a private scholarship at your institution.
Questions to Consider:
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Open Discussion
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GRANT WRITING 101
Demystifying the grant writing process
What are funders looking for?
(The answer could be YOU!)
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I have an idea!
Now what?
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Logic models help you identify your assets, goals, methodology, and outcomes before you begin looking for funders and writing a proposal.
What is your ultimate goal?
Step 1: Logic Model
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Find the foundations and opportunities.
Most campuses offer access to GrantStation, Foundation Directory Online, grants.gov (this is really more for federal grant opportunities and your institution is likely going to have to be involved)
Look at your partners, friends, resources that you access for your work and see who funds them
Step 2: Find the Funder and the Fit
How do you know if they’re a good fit?
Read what their mission or goals are carefully. ie. If you are looking to sponsor an event, their grant guidelines have to say they will sponsor events.
Look at what projects/organizations they have funded in the past and how your work compares.
Look up their 990s to see who they fund and at what levels. Some foundations only fund orgs that have less than a $500,000 budget, others only fund at least $200,000 at a time, etc.
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How much may it take to do the work?
Ballparking estimates for the people involved, how many hours they’ll contribute, etc OR how many scholarships you plan to give out AND if there are any set overhead costs of your institution or organization are important to help you frame how much your ask may be.
Can any of these costs be provided in-kind?
Would your institution or organization be able to provide any kind of match?
Tip: Start with a budget in mind
A budget ahead of time will help you find funders who can provide the resources you need.
Competitive grants often show a reasonable cost per person and low overhead. For example, if your program is awarding 100 students scholarships of $1000 each, then your total budget is already $10,000. If you are asking for $20,000 - or $10,000 more - just to distribute the scholarships, a funder will likely question that. Then is the question, what does a $1,000 scholarship do? Does it cover one class, one semester’s worth of books? Does it mean that a student wouldn’t have to work full-time during the school year?
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Step 3: Compose the Grant
Executive Summary - often a paragraph or two or character/word count limited; generally write this last after you’ve done the rest of the proposal
Needs: What is the problem? Illustrate with hard data and stories or anecdotal content. Why is this need important to address NOW? Generally, you will need hard and soft data to establish the problem or need and clearly outline your population demographics.
Organization Background: Why makes you/your organization/college the right group to meet the need? What makes you a responsible executor of funds?
Grant Structure
Most of this should be on your logic model so you can expand bullets from that in your narrative!
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Step 3: Compose the Grant
Methodology/Activities: What will you do with the money and under what timeline? Are these activities realistic in that timeframe? (ie. hiring new staff takes time; recruiting applicants and then reviewing applications for scholarships takes a lot of time and a team of reviewers, etc)
Budget Narrative/Project Staff: Does the budget make sense? Are you charging $15,000 to print 100 copies of a book? If you are covering staff, what is their expertise related to the project?
Measurable Goals/Outcomes: Must be able to quantifiably (and qualitatively?) show impact of work
Grant Structure
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Population: Who are you helping? How do you have access to this population? If students are involved, how are they recruited and compensated for their time or labor? How long will you track them? What changes do you expect to see in them?
Logistics: Where will the program take place? Is this space public or private and does it need to be rented? What supplies do you need (media, technology, print)?
Barriers: What could go wrong? Transportation issues? Childcare issues? Language barriers?
Some specifics to consider
Partnerships: If you identified partners, what will the relationship look like? Agree to what you intend each partner to do.
Outlining partnerships in a Memorandum of Understanding is often a required grant doc.
Timeline: What will be done each quarter? by mid-year? After 1 year? How long will it take to evaluate results?
Needs Assessments: Surveys and any kind of assessments that you can either do yourself or reference to show that a problem really exists (vs just suspected) help funders see that you’ve done your due diligence and research.
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Funding Cycle
Remember that getting an award is just one step in the fundraising process!
Funders like to get updates and be kept as partners in the work. The easiest path to a renewed grant is communication and good reports showing impact!
Good luck!
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Resources
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Resources Continued
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Reminders
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THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!
presidentsalliance.org
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