More Ways to Help Students
Opportunities to open new Scholarship Funds for the 2025–2026 scholarship season are now closed. If you’d like to stay involved, you can:
Scholarship Funds
Increase access to education and give local students opportunities to flourish by creating a scholarship that is uniquely your own at the Sacramento Region Community Foundation.
Eugene and Thora made a planned gift to open a scholarship.
Help Students Pursue Their Dreams
Give local students the opportunity to pursue their educational dreams through your scholarship. Whether you want to establish a legacy, honor a loved one, or give back to your community or your alma mater, you can create a scholarship that is uniquely your own. Here’s how it works.
Give
Open your Scholarship Fund by making a charitable contribution of cash, appreciated securities, or other assets and defining the purpose of your scholarship.
Your contribution is tax-deductible and allows you to shape eligibility and selection criteria that reflect your values and priorities. If you’re unsure which students to support, we can share insights on educational barriers and local trends to help your scholarship respond to emerging community needs.
Grow
Your fund is professionally invested and grows tax-free, allowing your support for students to increase over time.
We invest your fund according to your wishes, provide regular fund statements, and manage the administration on your behalf. You can add to your Scholarship Fund at any time, including through planned or estate gifts.
Grant
Put your philanthropy into action by awarding scholarships that help students pursue their educational goals.
You may choose to serve on the selection committee and help recommend recipients, or have our volunteers manage the review and selection process. We handle the administrative details to ensure awards are distributed on time and in compliance with IRS regulations. As an added benefit, your fund’s support fees are reinvested locally — helping expand educational opportunity and multiply your impact across the Sacramento region.
Your Scholarship Fund comes with services, expertise, and support to achieve your philanthropic goals:
✅ Service: Set the scholarship’s criteria and rely on our team to promote the scholarship, collect applications, facilitate selection, and distribute awards in compliance with federal requirements.
✅ Direct participation: Serve on your scholarship’s selection committee, if you wish. After the committee recommends scholarship awards, you can receive correspondence from recipient students.
✅ Legacy: Name successor advisors for your fund, if you wish, and define how your fund will be used after your lifetime, allowing it to be a lasting legacy.
✅ Investment Expertise: Your contributions to your Scholarship Fund are stewarded, tax-free, by professionals according to your wishes for growth and longevity.
✅ Double Your Impact: Re-invest support fees back into the Sacramento region.
✅ Build Community: Connect with like-minded philanthropists at exclusive events.
Partner with a local team dedicated to carrying out your philanthropic aspirations. With over 40 years of experience as the capital region’s trusted philanthropic resource, we’re here to help you shape your impact.
“Carroylin and I both come from poor
backgrounds and we struggled to get into college. We wanted to set up the scholarship so we could help make dreams come true for the next generation.”
Bob Threlkel, Carroylin and Robert Threlkel Scholarship Fund
Receive Scholarship Fund Updates
Opportunities to open new Scholarship Funds for the 2025–2026 season are now closed. If you’d like to stay informed in the future, sign up to receive a notification when the next opportunity to create a new Scholarship Fund opens.
Ready to learn more? We’re happy to work with you and your advisors to tailor a Scholarship Fund that suits your giving goals. Schedule a meeting to get started and contact us at any time with questions.
There are many benefits to opening a Scholarship Fund at the Sacramento Region Community Foundation. Among them:
Personal service: Support the types of students you care about by setting purpose, selection, and award criteria. We help you design a scholarship fund that will have the greatest impact on aspiring students. Once the fund is established and applications arrive, our team supports the committee in its annual selection process.
Direct participation: As a donor, you can participate on your scholarship’s selection committee. After the committee recommends scholarship awards, you can receive correspondence from students.
Investment expertise: Your contributions to your Scholarship Fund are stewarded by our expert investment committee and professional managers to ensure the longevity and growth of your fund.
Ensured legacy: You may name successor advisors for your Scholarship Fund and you can also define how your fund will be used after your lifetime – allowing your Scholarship Fund to be a lasting legacy.
The minimum contribution to set up a Scholarship Fund is $25,000. Your fund can be endowed with a minimum of $50,000, ensuring it generates meaningful awards to support student success — forever. We accept a variety of assets and have in-house expertise to process complex gifts, in collaboration with you and your financial advisors, ensuring you achieve the greatest tax advantages. Your fund can also receive planned gifts. See Ways to Give.
You can invest your charitable fund in our professionally managed investment pools, designed to fit your time horizon and giving goals. See Investment Portfolios.
Our competitive support fees offset the cost of fund administration and are also reinvested in the Sacramento region through our grantmaking and programs — attending to critical regional issues, improving local lives, and multiplying the impact of your giving. Our support fees vary based on fund type and, in some cases, on the size of the fund. See our fee schedule.
With our commitment to delivering world-class philanthropy, we offer a variety of support services to donors. We handle all “back office” support for your fund(s). You will have access to our online donor portal, where our team will update your fund with information on contributions, awards, investment earnings, and more. Our Philanthropy Team is available during office hours to respond to your questions and needs.
Yes. Anyone can make a charitable contribution to your Scholarship Fund through the transfer of a variety of assets, including cash, appreciated securities, real estate and more.
Our scholarships are typically open for students to apply from early December through mid-March. After the application closes, we review and qualify all applications to narrow down the pool of candidates. Throughout March, April, and May, scholarship committees and evaluators read and score applications and attend meetings to determine scholarship recipients. Students are notified of their scholarship award(s) by the end of June.
Yes. We’ll work with you to create scholarship guidelines that meet your personal goals. With our experience in managing scholarships, we can help you create a scholarship that is specific enough to honor your values and broad enough to attract a competitive pool of applicants. Common criteria to consider are: financial need, GPA or academic merit, field of study or major, class year, programs of study, institution of attendance, geographic region, and/or special circumstances (e.g., foster youth, veteran/dependent, unusual life situation).
Part of our role is to make sure that your scholarship follows the IRS rules for charitable giving. For a scholarship award to qualify as a charitable activity, the IRS requires that there be a large pool of applicants and a selection process to make the award competitive. The IRS will allow you to participate as a member of the selection committee, as long as you or your chosen committee members together do not have a controlling vote, which is ensured through conflict disclosure during the selection process.
Yes, we welcome outside committees. We will ask you to submit nomination forms for proposed committee members so that our staff can review and approve them.
If financial need is important to you, we can require students to include a copy of their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) with the application. The FAFSA shows the student’s household income and unmet need based on the actual cost of attending their chosen institution. Students also have the opportunity to explain special circumstances affecting their financial situation.
Let’s Get Started
Your philanthropy is personal. We are your support team, here to help you give with confidence.
