Matching Dollar Scholarship Program

Transmittal forms are due by August 1, 2007. Please contact Joe with any questions regarding scholarships or student lists.

Scholarship 2007-08 Memo
Scholarship 2007-08 Transmittal Form

General scholarship information follows:

or, Funding for Future Badgers

The Matching Dollar Scholarship Program is a popular way for chapters to assist local UW-Madison students. The mission is to attract the brightest and best students to the UW and provide them with valuable scholarships. The University of Wisconsin Foundation matches, dollar-for-dollar, up $8,000 per year, the funds raised by chapters. Since the program was founded in 1967, chapters have awarded more than $5 million to nearly 5,000 deserving students.

The first thing you need to do is recruit qualified applicants for your scholarships. You can do this through a general mailing to incoming or current UW students, by working with high school guidance counselors, or through newspaper ads and articles.
Students can’t apply if they don’t know about it. You can help by providing admissions brochures to high school students and their guidance counselors. At the beginning of each year, we suggest that you contact UW Office of Admissions for the latest handouts.

You can also send application forms directly to the admitted students in your area. Each year, All chapters receive a list of continuing and accepted students from WAA by March 1. You should also distribute applications to high schools and let guidance counselors know about the opportunity. If you share the list of incoming students with the guidance counselor, he or she can encourage them to complete the application. It can be an effective way to identify the most deserving applicants.

If your chapter provides scholarships to transfer students from UW System two-year colleges or technical colleges, you may choose to work with staff at the college. They can often select the scholarship recipients based on their knowledge of the student's qualifications. Chapters should check with UW Compliance before awarding a scholarship to a prospective student-athlete who will attend the UW and participate on an athletic team, or any student identified as a “prospect.” For more information, contact Steve Waterfield, assistant athletic director, at (608) 265-2973 or SCW@athletics.wisc.edu.

This team should be led by the chapter’s scholarship chair and can include high school guidance counselors and other volunteers. This committee will review applications select the scholarship recipients.

The committee should use a standard evaluation form to help ensure a consistent and objective review. You will assign values for academics, extracurricular activities and financial need for each applicant, then to use these values to rank them. A combination of all the reviewers' rankings provides an overall ranking for selection of scholarship recipients. You may also interview the applicants in person, but be sure to ask each one the same questions to ensure fairness.

It’s safe to say that today's students are likely to live in a world quite different from our childhood neighborhoods. UW-Madison cannot achieve its mission of providing an excellent undergraduate education unless the students, faculty and staff become more diverse. To help us achieve that goal, WAA strongly encourages you to offer scholarships to the best and brightest students of color in your area. It can be a major consideration for students deciding between colleges competing for their admission.

Scholarship recipients should be notified of their award as quickly as possible, especially to make them aware of any banquets or ceremonies they may be asked to attend. All applicants, both those selected as well as those not selected, should be notified in writing in order to bring closure to the scholarship application process. Sending out press releases not only helps you honor the winners but also gives your chapter some good visibility in the community. It’s a nice touch to grant each winner a certificate to show off. And be sure to keep in touch with them — scholarship winners often become volunteers as alumni.

There are so many good causes these days, it’s impossible to support all of them. How do you make yours stand out? An easy way to maximize donations is including space on each event invitation for a contribution. Another popular method is raffling or auctioning Badger memorabilia (after all, who wouldn’t want a signed football?) Contact your WAA representative to purchase these items. You can also make it easy for alumni to donate by publicizing the Web link to UWF's donation site, where they can point and click in their pj’s to benefit your fund.

After selection of scholarship recipients, the chapter needs to let WAA know. Submit a scholarship transmittal form with the students' names, addresses, ID numbers and the dollar amounts of the awards as well as a check payable to the UW Foundation, if needed. These materials should be sent to WAA, in care of Joe Hammes, no later than July 1 so that the paperwork for the students can be processed and the funds be transferred to the appropriate account.

The scholarship amount will then be deducted from each student's tuition bill, and will later be reflected in the UW Foundation account report. Note that while the students will receive the awards at the beginning of the semester (fall, spring or both), the account from which the money was dispersed will not reflect the deduction until sometime after the start of the new fiscal year (July 1). It is critical that chapters remember this as they consider their gifts and provide the funds necessary to support them. Note also that the balance in the UW Foundation report does not reflect the match they provide. Unused scholarship money is returned to the chapter account without the matching fund.

Chapters should keep good records of the scholarship funds deposited and withdrawn from the UW Foundation account. Please keep in mind that although scholarships are typically awarded in spring and used by the recipient during the following fall and spring, they are not billed or withdrawn from the chapter account and matched by the UW Foundation until fall. The chapter records should be reconciled periodically with the UW Foundation account reports.

The scholarship chair should review the account balance and recommend an amount to be awarded for the following year. The chapter also needs to decide whether scholarships should be awarded on a semester or yearly basis.

In addition to chapter scholarships, WAA offers a number of other funding opportunities through affiliate groups and corporate awards. Encourage students in your area to visit our scholarship page to learn more. Another excellent source of information is the UW Office of Student Financial Services, which supplies financial aid counseling and details about other scholarships.

After the scholarship reception, keep in touch with the students while they’re at the UW. Invite the winners and their parents to Founders’ Day and other chapter events.