The Scholarship Academy

Our mission is to help low-income students secure resources to pursue higher education opportunities with minimum debt and, thus, create a healthier financial aid culture.

• About Us
  Our work started with offering a Scholarship Boot Camp course to low-income families in Washington DC and Atlanta. From 2006-2009, we made sure each family was able to create a 4-year college funding plan, one that enabled them to not only get into college, but made sure they were able to financially stay there. Our unique approach to private college funding earned us recognition from organizations such as Echoing Green and the Ashoka Changemakers, as well as features in publications such as Black Enterprise and the NAACP Crisis Magazine.
  
  In 2010, we shifted our work from supporting individual families to working directly with high schools and youth-serving organizations to implement our 16-module curriculum on a larger scale. Through a series of counselor trainings, and now, online courses offered through our Virtual Scholarship Center, we help organizations create healthier financial aid cultures- environments where financial aid doesn’t simply happen to low-income families, but they are able to create proactive financial aid plans. To date, we’ve impacted more than 15,000 families, primarily in Georgia, New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, PA.
  
  Over the last few years, our partnerships have included Atlanta Public Schools, the New York College Access for All Consortium, Clayton County Public Schools, Dekalb County Public schools, and the GEAR UP Georgia network.
• Our Impact
  We serve over 8,000 students in 12 different counties in Georgia- including Fulton, Clayton, & Dekalb. From our work:
  -We have served over 25,000 students and families since our inception
  -Students have received near 45 million in private aid
  -80% of our participants report tripling the number of scholarship applications submitted after program completion
  -70% increase in participants' financial aid knowledge and confidence in navigating key financial aid processes