How Nonprofit Scholarship Administration Delivers Consistent Results for Sponsors and Students

When you sponsor a scholarship program, you’re looking to make a positive, meaningful impact on students’ lives—and you want an administrative partner that understands and shares your goals.

As you work toward launching or expanding your program, there are plenty of questions to consider, including deciding whether you want to partner with a for-profit company or a nonprofit scholarship administrator. Here’s how working with a nonprofit partner can help you maximize your investment in students.

Mission, Not Money

First and foremost, working with a trusted nonprofit scholarship administrator means you’re getting a partner whose aim is to fulfill a mission, not to make money for shareholders—and that means your nonprofit administrator shares your commitment to getting the most dollars possible into the hands of students in need.

In addition, with a mission-driven administrative partner, you can be sure you won’t be upsold unnecessary services—and that your students’ data is treated as secure personal information, not a sales opportunity.

At Scholarship America, we have been dedicated to our nonprofit mission since our founder began knocking on doors and asking for scholarship donations in his hometown. Fifty years ago, our first corporate program sponsor proposed a partnership that would help award scholarships to their employees’ children. That company is still a partner today—as is half of the Fortune 500.

The reason? They’re committed to eliminating financial barriers to higher education, and they know a mission-driven nonprofit like Scholarship America shares that commitment.

Investing in Improvement

Because nonprofit scholarship administrators are focused on mission, not money, it means big investments can be made to improve mission fulfillment, not a bottom line.

At Scholarship America, since we don’t have to focus on shareholders, we’ve been able to leverage grant funding and reserves to invest in a generational technology upgrade, launching in 2026.

Our new platform is being built to modernize scholarship application and administration for students and sponsors, ensuring that the online experience for users is up to the same high standards they’ve come to expect from Scholarship America. And while the technology is new, Scholarship America’s delivery team, processes, and standards are unchanged.

That process starts with our Senior Scholarship Advisors, who work one-on-one with sponsors to develop tailored, impactful programs that reach exactly the students they want to help. It continues with a team of Program Designers, Program Managers, customer service specialists and marketing experts covering every aspect of administration, from scholarship promotion to last-minute student questions.

And, after the cycle is completed and students have received their scholarships, it includes annual reporting and assessment, identifying what’s working and where we can improve.

For scholarship sponsors, every step is part of the standard process—and it’s all tailored to ensure programs getting everything they need, and nothing they don’t.

Consistency and Continuity

By taking start-to-finish responsibility, and end-to-end accountability, nonprofit scholarship administrators like Scholarship America provide impact, results and peace of mind for scholarship sponsors.

That’s why Scholarship America has a 96% sponsor retention rate—and it’s why we’re the nation’s largest administrator of scholarship programs. With almost seven decades of proven service delivery, Scholarship America is the trusted nonprofit scholarship administration partner you can count on.