Independent post-secondary scholarships are one of the biggest new trends in philanthropy – and one of the oldest structures. Ever since education became a core charitable purpose, providing students with access through financial aid has been a widespread charitable activity. Educational institutions have thousands of endowed scholarships, many of them that attract estate donations. What’s different now?
New Players
The difference is the emergence of independent scholarship foundations. Let me shine a spotlight on some of the new and not-so-new Canadian players in this space. Major individual philanthropists are leading the way through with own foundations. These include Beedie Luminaries, Loran Scholars, Wolf Scholars, McCall McBain Scholars, and Little Scholarship in Windsor-Essex. These programs are supported by endowments that are collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Each scholarship program started with a personal vision and a primary philanthropist as funder, although the scholarships often attract other donors over time. Most are programs of private foundations. All are student centred providing choice where to attend school – and most are not tied to a single university or college. These programs are well promoted and feature intensive adjudication processes to identify outstanding recipients. Even foundations that have partnerships with universities – for example, Wolf with University of Toronto – have parallel, bespoke processes and do not rely on the award systems of the university. Like granddaddy Rhodes Scholarship, the new class of scholarships look at the whole person – academic ability, financial need, character and non-academic achievement.
There are other analogous scholarship entities that are with public charities. This second group of scholarship foundations, however, typically does not have a single philanthropist founder.
Indspire does remarkable work to support indigenous students. The Rideau Hall Foundation has a variety of scholarship programs. Horatio Alger Association of Canada is affiliated with a US charity and guided by a rags-to-richest version of the American Dream that is the experience of its major donors. Pathways to Education, which has combines community-based youth support with funding post-secondary education that accumulates through program participation. Pathways goes upstream to help students prioritize and get ready for post-secondary education, not just fund it at time of entry. Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast “I Hate the Ivy League” reveals why traditional institutional scholarships are poor at driving social mobility.
New Needs; Old Structure
The new crop of independent scholarship programs respond to several factors. In no order:
- Focus on the individual, which is supported by high level of personalization. The underlying giving philosophy is a “hand up, not hand out”.
- Reaction to the success and limitations of university student aid programs. Over the last 30 years, universities have had unprecedented success with endowed scholarships. But these programs are often defined by small administrative budgets, tight rules, and institutionally-focused goals. (More on this below.)
- Commitment to improve social mobility. This belief is promoted – some say ironically – by wealthy philanthropists who have benefited from our moment of unprecedented wealth concentration. These programs embrace diversity and recipients reflect society today.
- Desire by new philanthropists to fund personally meaningful, connected, nimble programs that align with their own life experience.
- Goal to create multi-faceted, peer support for students. Many of the new scholarship programs have a cohort component to help students thrive, connect, and build networks.
It may be a case of everything old is new again, but these programs share features and thinking that is striking. And they are attracting big dollars.
Old Models
There is something familiar about these new scholarship foundations. They echo an earlier age. The early 20th century saw unprecedented wealth inequity and the birth of modern philanthropy. Progressive Era philanthropy focused on social mobility, education, public health and social reforms. But not all scholarships embraced these values fully. Examples of include the Rhodes Trust. My favorite example is the RW Leonard Trust, Canada’s most offensive and weirdly redemptive philanthropic chapter. Both Rhodes and Leonard reflect the prejudices and ambition of the British Empire. These 100-year-old scholarships had a status quo bias, while the current generation has is more likely to promote social mobility.
Institutional v Community-based Scholarships
After starting my career at the University of Toronto and working on major scholarship programs – including with multiple government endowment matching programs – I woke up to the need and desire for a different type of scholarship in the 2010s. At Aqueduct Foundation, we have a donor who tried to set up a scholarship at their alma mater. They wanted to combine financial need and academic ability in the award criteria. The university said scholarships were based on academic excellence, but bursaries addressed financial need. Two separate awards and goals.
Our donor said, “Why can’t I combine the two? You don’t list a bursary on your resume, just a scholarship. I want to encourage kids not just give them a handout. I was a child of a single parent and my high school marks weren’t the best, but I did alright. How do we support kids like me without loading them up with debt?”
Ow! This donor inspired Aqueduct to launch its community-based scholarship program 14 years ago. They helped me realize that universities were awash in student aid after years of successful fundraising in 1990s and 2000s and institutional student aid had limitations. To be fair, institutions had to develop clear policies to administer these programs and have limited funds to do so. Naturally, student aid programs became rule bound and, at times, overly pragmatic and too bureaucratic.
University scholarships are also used for a primary institutional goal: to compete for talent. They are recruitment tools for the ‘best and brightest’ students. Except in rare cases and prestige awards, institutions have limited resources to personalize selection. And so a high percentage of institutional scholarship students come from stable more affluent families, good schools, and had years of tutoring. The competition isn’t fair in the “merit” based world.
A big, quiet trend
For such a big trend, it’s interesting that community-based scholarships are not much talked about in the world of Canadian philanthropy. I don’t recall any recent philanthropy conferences with a session on scholarship programs. The Philanthropist, Canada’s oldest journal on philanthropy, doesn’t write about these programs. (Disclosure: I used to be a co-editor.) It’s not a topic discussed in books on philanthropy.
My perception is scholarships are perceived of as old fashioned, lacking in systemic impact – too much “merit” and not enough justice – and too individualistic. But they provide direct, life-changing support to young people for higher education, access to networks, mentors and examples. And social mobility. They are popular, meaningful programs for both donor and recipients.
