Online service to match students with scholarships

There are scholarship funds across the Puget Sound that some years can't give money away.

Others struggle to get enough applications to make the competition worthwhile.

Take Soroptimist International of Seattle Metropolitan, a women's group that each year awards a number of small scholarships to single mothers who want to go back to college or attend for the first time.

Pat Griffith, the organization's award chair, tries to spread word about the modest grants through community colleges and women's centers — but each year is surprised by how few women end up applying.

"We have a hard time giving money away, sometimes," Griffith said.

Soroptimist recently joined a free scholarship clearinghouse — thewashboard.org — that should make it easier for the organization and others like it to reach a wider field of college-bound applicants. Touted as the eHarmony for scholarships, the online service is set to launch early in January, just as students begin what at times can be a frantic search for money to pay for school.

The clearinghouse will match state-based scholarship providers with students who either plan to attend college in the state or who are Washington residents planning to go to college elsewhere.

The online service is free to both students and providers.

Some 50 scholarship providers now on thewashboard expect to make more than 1,700 scholarship awards in the next school year. Providers range from the Seattle Foundation which, in addition to its own scholarship fund, administers 40 others — one for high-school seniors who have been homeless; another for Issaquah high-school students with at least a 2.5 GPA.

Washboard differs from other online scholarship-search services in that it uses students' profiles to search only for those scholarships for which a student qualifies. It then ranks the results based on the number of scholarship criteria the student meets.

"The screen they get back might say they meet three of four requirements," said Christy England-Siegerdt, associate director for research at the Washington Higher Education Coordinating Board, which will host and maintain the site.

If a student meets none of the requirements, the scholarship is simply not listed.

"Students know which ones they have the best shot at — which is a huge time saver," England-Siegerdt said. "That's the difference between washboard and what's available out there now."

Won't sell info

Jackie Irby, a senior who will graduate from Franklin High School next year, expects to use the site to find scholarships to supplement any aid she might get to attend college locally.

Irby said she likes that thewashboard, unlike other scholarship sites, won't sell her information to companies that in turn flood her with unwanted e-mail. She and other students who have helped to test the site will post videos on social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace so other students can learn about the site, she said.

"The thought of (finding scholarships) can be pretty overwhelming — especially with all the other pressures you're under as a senior," Irby said. "I know there's a lot out there; I think this will help focus my choices."

Soroptimist's Griffith said she thinks thewashboard will provide broader marketing for the handful of scholarships it offers, which annually total between $5,000 and $7,000 combined.

"Sometimes we get just one or two applications," she said. "And sometimes those one or two are really good."

Griffith said she understands the pressure single mothers are sometimes under, juggling family and jobs and school.

Potential applicants may not know what kinds of awards are available. "They may not think they qualify, they may come from a background where education is not part of the family history," Griffith said.

Early discussions for thewashboard began four years ago between the Seattle Foundation and the Northeast Education Loan Association, NELA, a student-loan-guarantor agency that provides college-planning support to students and families.

Both raised concerns about scholarship money that each year goes unused, even as college costs escalated and student need grew.

"We were curious why certain students were able to access scholarships while others were not," said Tiffany Jones, program manger at NELA.

Officials at the Seattle Foundation, for example, spoke of one scholarship, whose only criterion is that a recipient must be a college-bound African-American male, that has a tough time finding applicants.

The early conversations led to the creation of a public/private partnership called the Washington Scholarship Coalition that looked at what was available online to students searching for scholarships, including a small pilot program out of Oregon.

Through thewashboard, Jones said, the site will provide donors with information so they can better align their giving with the real needs of students.

"For the first time in the state we will have data on who is giving and receiving scholarship funds."

Lornet Turnbull: 206-464-2420 or lturnbull@seattletimes.com

Northeast Education Loan Association program manger