USA Funds Matching Grant Means More Scholarships for California Students

USA Funds^® recently pledged a multi-year challenge grant totaling $50,000 to California 's Dollars for Scholars regional office. The matching-grant offer, effective March 10, 2005, through March 9, 2007, will help California's regional Dollars for Scholars office expand its current programming and encourage growth of new community-based, volunteer-led scholarship groups. The regional office helps guide and support new chapters as they grow.

“We're fortunate to have already accessed $20,000 of the matching grant,” says Ann Worley, executive director of the California Dollars for Scholars office. “We are hoping to leverage more of the money during our campaign: A Dollar a Day in May … because college doesn't happen by chance.”

The challenge grant was given to spur donations from other organizations, such as postsecondary institutions, lending organizations, guarantors and foundations, according to USA Funds President and CEO Carl Dalstrom, who also serves as chairman of Indiana 's Dollars for Scholars board.

“We are committed to supporting Dollars for Scholars chapters nationwide,” Dalstrom says. “We believe that all organizations in the higher-education arena share in the responsibility of funding these grassroots organizations that are the source of scholarship funding for so many deserving students.”

California Dollars for Scholars volunteers awarded more than $1.5 million to students last year.

The figure continues to grow as new chapters form and as other chapters grow and mature, says Worley. Once formed, Dollars for Scholars chapters traditionally become stable sources of scholarship funds at the local level.

May 2005 marks California Dollars for Scholars' seventh anniversary as a chartered region of the national Dollars for Scholars organization. Currently there are 65 California Dollars for Scholars chapters.

Dollars for Scholars is a 46-year-old national network of more than 1,250 community-based scholarship foundations whose volunteers provide academic support and financial aid to local students for postsecondary education. Dollars for Scholars is a program of Scholarship America, the nation's largest private-sector scholarship and educational-support organization.