How to Create Buy-In for Your Scholarship Program

Kaleidoscope

Creating buy-in for your scholarship program is essential for its long-term success and sustainability. Whether you’re seeking to engage donors, attract PR opportunities, or secure internal support, the key is to demonstrate the tangible impact and value of the program. By showcasing growth, sharing student success stories, and aligning your program with broader business objectives, you can foster trust and inspire continued investment. With the right strategy, your scholarship program can become a powerful tool for driving both social good and business outcomes. We’ve outlined a few successful strategies that have helped our customers create buy-in and justify the investment in a partner like Kaleidoscope.

Impact Reporting

One of the most effective ways to create buy-in for your scholarship program is by clearly demonstrating its impact. Stakeholders want to see how your program is making a tangible difference — whether they’re donors, educational institutions, or even the students themselves.

What should you highlight?

Program Growth: Outline how many applicants your program has grown by YOY and all time. Adding up the total number of dollars awarded for the lifetime of the scholarship program can also highlight its significance in a larger scope.

For example, Talking Rain noted in its most recent report that its scholarship program has enabled them to connect with its schools and award $150,000 in scholarships, growing by 111% volume from the previous year, an increase to 31,968 applicants.

Student Success Stories: Personal testimonials from scholarship recipients can create an emotional connection. Highlight how the scholarship has impacted their academic journey, career trajectory, and personal development.

Post-Graduation Success: Track metrics like employment rates or further academic achievements of scholarship recipients. This can provide concrete evidence that your program is a long-term investment in talent and future leadership.

Make sure to present the data in a compelling way, using visuals like graphs or infographics alongside qualitative narratives. By sharing these success stories and outcomes, you can help potential donors and partners visualize the value your scholarship brings.

One of our customers, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., utilized a custom video to welcome it’s 2024 Cohort of scholars, highlighting their achievements, and the impact the program seeks to foster.

Donor Reporting

Donor reporting is crucial for sustaining and growing your scholarship program. Transparency is essential in maintaining trust, which is key to getting repeat donations and expanding your donor base.

What should be included in donor reports?

Financial Breakdown: Show exactly how the funds have been allocated. Break down the costs of scholarships awarded, including administration costs, to reassure donors that their money is being well-managed.

Scholarship Recipients’ Profiles: Provide donors with profiles of students their contributions have supported. Personalizing the impact through student stories—alongside photos or short videos—brings the program to life and fosters a deeper connection.

Program Milestones and Metrics: Share any key achievements of the program, like how many students have been funded, total dollars awarded, yearly applicants, any new partnerships formed, or additional resources the program has gained since the donation. This gives donors a clear picture of how their contributions are part of something bigger.

Additionally sending periodic updates, not just a once-a-year snapshot, can keep your donors engaged and help them feel like active partners in your program’s success.

Align Investment with Business Objectives

If your program is being inefficiently managed because you don’t have great software, there is simply no time to focus on other things – and often the people managing the scholarships, it isn’t even their full-time job. To help justify the Investment in a partnership like Kaleidoscope, you should align your program goals with the competencies of a partner.

For example, if your goal is:

Admin Relief – Kaleidoscope can help you spend less time on busy work, and double output without doubling the team.

Measure & Report on Impact – Make it easy for people to recognize the program’s impact with Kaleidoscope’s reporting toolset.

Increase Applicants & Dollars Awarded – With its program marketplace, Kaleidoscope can help you attract more qualified applicants and give more money.

Build & Scale Programs – Build the program you need and scale when you are ready with Kaleidoscope’s configurable platform.

Justifying ROI

Return on investment (ROI) is increasingly important, especially when courting large donors, internal buy-in, or corporate sponsors who view their contributions as a strategic investment. By developing ROI reports, you can quantify and justify the value of the scholarship program.

How to prove ROI?

Partnership Justification: If your organization is partnered with a company such as Kaleidoscope, it will be extremely important to quantify the investment to internal stakeholders. You should consider the loss of time and salary that would have been focused on running the scholarship internally rather than typical job duties. When you subtract the financial losses of running a program from the cost of working with Kaleidoscope, the cost and time savings for your organization can be made evident.

Market Impact: For larger organizations, it will be key to outline the impact a scholarship program has on the long-term goals and profitability of the company.

For example, Talking Rain justified how a scholarship program supports the company’s success by tapping into the K-12 demographic, which drives over 60% of its sales. It fosters brand loyalty with young consumers and sets the company apart by showcasing a commitment to education, which resonates with socially conscious Gen Z. Outlining that Gen Z represents over 40% of American consumers and influences $143 billion in spending and that the program strengthens the brand’s reputation, boosts PR, and enhances its corporate social responsibility, creating lasting benefits for both the community and the brand.

To make the data more digestible, consider including charts or ROI dashboards in your reports. You should display trends over time to allow stakeholders to easily grasp the long-term benefits of their investment.

Engaging Recipients & Donors While Creating PR Opportunities

Continuing to engage alumni and donors is essential for maintaining a vibrant and supportive community. It is important to both celebrate the recipients of the scholarship as well as ensure the donors of your program feel involved.

Some ideas of how you can continue to involve donors in the process are:

Creating public, high-visibility announcements for donations and award recipients.
- Including press releases, web articles, and pages in a local paper.

Host celebration or recognition events acknowledging donors and awarding recipients in person.

Utilize Social Media & Digital storytelling to shout out successes, including award recipient stories in email newsletters to donors.

Collecting positive PR mentions from outside publications to help validate the program’s success and impact.

These are all strategies you can incorporate to continue engaging your donors and create positive sentiment around your program and the impact it brings; not only fostering a strong sense of community but also enhancing its public image. These strategies encourage ongoing support, helping create a virtuous cycle of giving and gratitude that benefits all parties involved.