See how Reviewr helps community foundations honor each fund's purpose and reach the right applicants.
Every named fund at a community foundation starts with a donor's purpose: a scholarship for graduates of one high school, for students entering one field, for one town's young farmers or first-generation students. Over time, schools consolidate, fields change, and the students who need help most may not fit a fund's criteria at all.
Community foundations were built for this tension. Under IRS rules, a community foundation's governing body must be able to modify a donor's restriction if it becomes "unnecessary, incapable of fulfillment, or inconsistent with the charitable needs of the community." For scholarships from donor-advised funds, the IRS expects selection by a committee no donor controls, on an objective, nondiscriminatory basis under a procedure the board approved in advance.
On paper, the balance is clear. In practice, it often lives in dozens of fund agreements, a few file cabinets and the memory of a small staff.
This session is built around two of the five dimensions of Review Integrity, a framework for judging whether an application and review process is fair, consistent and defensible.
The first is Rubric Clarity: are each fund's criteria written, weighted and visible before students apply, so the donor's purpose is the standard every committee scores against?
The second is Decision Traceability: if a donor, a family or your board asked why a student received an award, could you show how that decision honored the fund's purpose?
When criteria live only in fund agreements, each committee interprets them its own way. Some funds draw two applicants for two awards, and the money sits. Others go to the same few students year after year, while students who need help never apply because they can't tell which funds they qualify for.
Donor relationships strain when a committee's choice doesn't match what the family expected. And when the board asks what the funds accomplished, the answer gets rebuilt by hand.
The best time to fix a fund's criteria is before its next application window opens. Every cycle that runs on unclear criteria is another year of awards that are harder to explain.
Program officers, scholarship coordinators, donor relations staff and executive directors at community foundations, along with the volunteer committee members who help select recipients. It's especially useful for foundations managing many named or donor-advised funds with a small staff.
Is this legal advice?No. The session covers general practices for documenting criteria and selection. Before changing a fund's terms or your donor-advised fund procedures, talk with your counsel.
Does Reviewr pay scholarships or track fund balances?No. Reviewr runs the application, review and selection, and tracks acceptance, proof of enrollment and thank-you notes. It doesn't disburse funds or track fund balances, so your fund accounting system stays your system of record. You can export a recipient report for your finance team.
We have dozens of funds with different criteria. Is that too complicated?No. One application can match each student to every fund they're eligible for, and each fund can have its own committee and scorecard.
Founded in 2011, Reviewr is SOC 2 Type II certified and has processed more than 1 million applications for thousands of organizations.
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