A new tool, an online universal scholarship application,is now open at the Kearney Area Community Foundation (KACF) to help area students apply for multiple scholarships.
With the online universal application, students can fill out a single application and the system will tell them for which of KACF’s scholarships they are eligible.
The application requests information such as which county they live in, which school they plan on attending and what field they plan to go into. Since many of KACF’s scholarships are specific to things like schools and majors, the system will be able to filter out any scholarships for which the student is not eligible.
“This will save a lot of time for students,” says Laurel McKellips, Program Manager at KACF. “With the old system, students had to look at the eligibility for each scholarship to find out if they qualify, and then fill out a separate application for each one they are applying for. With this new system, they can fill out the one application and find out right away which ones they can apply for.”
The universal application will also allow them to quickly apply to multiple scholarships.
“Another nice thing about this application is that it will autofill things like letters of recommendation and some answers to essay questions,” McKellips says. “For example, if you’re applying for Scholarship A and it asks ‘What do you plan to do with your college education?’, the application will save your answer and auto fill it to any other scholarship you’re applying for that asks that question or a similar one. This is great because students won’t have to essentially type out the same answer multiple times. The system will give you a message explaining that the answer you’re putting in may autofill to other scholarships. Some scholarships will ask more specific questions for that individual scholarship, like if it’s a scholarship for 4-H students it may ask questions about their 4-H activities, but the system will let the students know if any of the scholarships they qualify for require any additional information.”
Some of KACF’s scholarships are not available in the universal application, as they require a paper application. Applications and information on those scholarships are available on our website.
The Kearney Area Community Foundation manages 55 scholarship funds. In 2022, KACF granted 134 scholarships totaling $180,681.To find out more about the application and each of KACF’s scholarships, go to kearneyfoundation.org/scholarships
