How We’re Advancing Our Ability to Provide Scholarships Across the Country
How We’re Advancing Our Ability to Provide Scholarships Across the Country
Two of our ambassadors, Olivia and Arianna, attended the 2023 National Comp conference. While at the conference, they sat down and talked to Risk & Insurance about their experiences with Kids’ Chance.
Olivia had advice for anyone in the workers’ compensation community who wants to support Kids’ Chance: whenever they “come across a family that meets that criteria with a child, getting our name out there, like ‘Hey, here’s this opportunity for you in the future, so that way this one event in your life doesn’t stop your goals.’”
We couldn’t agree more, which is why we talk about the Planning for the Future initiative so often. This initiative allows us to identify eligible applicants no matter their age and connect them to the Kids’ Chance in their state when the time to apply for a scholarship arrives. We continue to make it easy for anyone to refer an eligible kid, providing presentations and printed materials that direct to our online submission form.
Additionally, members of our board and our executive director go on the road to speak in person about Kids’ Chance and how members of the workers’ compensation community can help us identify eligible families.
We have seen the success of our focus: Last year we saw a 20% increase in submissions. Submissions on behalf of students aged 15 and under increased by 41%, which means we’re not only increasing submissions; we’re also fulfilling our intent to identify kids no matter how old they are. And most importantly, we have states awarding scholarships to kids that came through Planning for the Future.
While the national organization bears the responsibility of maintaining and feeding the pipeline of eligible applicants, our states award our scholarships. There would be nothing worse for us as a community than to identify an eligible kid and then not be in a position to support them.
That’s why Kids’ Chance of America decided to invest in infrastructure to support our state organizations. The national now supports a state website solution and a scholarship platform. To date, 24 states are participating in the first phase of the website solution and 31 are using the scholarship platform.
By offering these services nationally, we help the members of our community recognize Kids’ Chance through a consistent brand. We also make our application more accessible to our families and to the volunteers who need to manage the application process. Moreover, sharing common systems allows us to develop shared best practices and benefit from economies of scale.
While we’re standardizing infrastructure, we recognize that each of our states is unique. Our state organizations have founding dates as early as 1988 and as recent as 2022. What they need to become sustainable varies from state to state.
We’ve developed a peer-to-peer approach that brings state leadership together in small groups. This approach allows volunteers to learn from other states at a similar stage in their journey. It also allows our national staff to target education and support as well as deliver it with greater depth.
As the national organization, it is our mission to unite the worker’s compensation community in support of the kids of workers who have been injured on the job. We’re proud to have the support of 17 national partners, with Mahathi Infotech and Ametros joining the Kids’ Chance community in 2023.
We’re also proud that those who get involved stay involved. Our donor retention rate beats the national average, and many of our national partners have been with us since our earliest days.
Together, we will continue to achieve our goals and give kids a chance at a better future.
