Some states or institutions may have prohibited the offering of scholarships to students based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, or religion. These prohibitions apply to awards the institution is responsible for, either through institutional funding or from donor-funded scholarships. These prohibitions do not apply to organizations external to the institution that may send scholarship dollars to the school for a student selected for the external opportunity.  

Mitigating Prohibited Donor Funds: 


Consult your institutional, legal team on how to manage donor-funded scholarships with prohibited eligibility criteria. You need to know 1) how to manage funds established before enacting the prohibitions and 2) how to move forward with funds not yet established.  

Some Possibilities: 

  • Some institutions may work with donors and/or the courts for funds with deceased donors to modify eligibility requirements when possible to adhere to the new regulations. 
  • Some institutions may grandfather in pre-established funds but do not allow the creation of new funds based on the prohibited eligibility criteria. 
  • Some institutions may utilize a “pooling” strategy where they commit other non-prohibited type scholarships initially to students but later identify eligible students interested in being a specific scholar for the prohibited type of funds. Students opt to be a scholar of the prohibited type fund but may end up with the same dollar amount initially offered because the funds get swapped out rather than stacked. 


External Scholarships: 

Because these prohibitions do not apply to external scholarships, schools using ScholarshipUniverse need not worry if students are matching to and applying for external opportunities. However, schools need to be aware of the matching criteria they are adding to their internal scholarships in the system.  

Schools still concerned with matching questions in SU based on Race, Sex, Ethnicity, National Origin or Religion, the following options are available: 

  • Schools can group these types of questions into Question Containers and use the Display Text section of the Container to inform students that the items within the Container(s) are only for matching to external scholarship opportunities and are optional. But not answering the questions will limit the number of potential matching opportunities. 
  • Schools can also choose to reword these global questions to express that they are only for matching to some external scholarship opportunities. 


Note:This communication is not meant as regulatory guidance or advice to a school. It is the responsibility of the institution to ensure that the implementation, configuration, updates to, and utilization of the toolset purchased from CampusLogic are meeting Federal and State regulatory requirements/sub-regulatory guidance, institutional policies, and accrediting body standards and requirements.