Lower giving means fewer scholarships

Falling support for
special Sunday appeals
hurts student grants

United Methodist News Service
NASHVILLE, Tenn.—The decline in giving to special Sunday offerings is wreaking havoc on United Methodist scholarships.
The Office of Loans and Scholarships had to turn away 300 eligible applicants last year.
“We continually have more eligible applicants than we have dollars available,” said Angella Current-Felder, executive director of the office, a unit of the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry.
Current-Felder said giving has declined to the three special Sunday offerings that support scholarships to United Methodist students:
n World Communion Sunday, which provides scholarships for ethnic minority students.
n United Methodist Student Day, which enables undergraduates to attend United Methodist-related schools.
n Native American Ministries Sunday, which provides scholarships for Native Americans pursing master of divinity degrees. 
Each United Methodist-related college receives allocations from the United Methodist Student Day offering, and each annual conference receives 10 percent of its Student Day receipts to award to merit scholars, she said.
The education board administers 60 scholarship programs. They provided nearly $4.8 million in awards to 3,540 students last year. The agency provided another $1.2 million in loans to 500 students. 
Giving to the three special Sundays has dropped or remained flat while the number of scholarship applications has increased.
Collections in 2004 decreased 6.9 percent for World Communion Sunday and 4.4 percent for Native American Ministries Sunday. The total inched up 0.7 percent for United Methodist Student Day.
Against that backdrop, Current-Felder’s office has received 50 more applications this year than what was received in May 2004. To date, the office has received 2,108 applications for the 2005-06 academic year, up from 2,053 a year earlier.
The average scholarship awarded ranges from $800 to $1,000, she said.
Portions of the Student Day offering are returned to United Methodist-related schools to award scholarships themselves, but the lack of money has prevented an increase in allocations to the schools.
The denomination’s Gift of Hope Scholarship Fund is decreasing because no new money from the United Methodist Student Day offering is being fed into the program.
“Continuing this program is going to be difficult in another couple of years,” Current-Felder said.
In addition to the drop in special Sundays giving, another factor has contributed to scholarship denials: restrictions on earnings from wills and annuities, which represent 70 percent of scholarship money awarded from the board or money awarded through the United Methodist Foundation for Higher Education.
The amount provided from wills and annuities—money bequeathed to the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry or to the foundation—amounts to nearly $4 million that is invested by the board. The earnings from those wills and annuities provide the scholarships. 
In a mailing to the denomination’s bishops, Current-Felder said that at the end of July 2004, about $3.7 million in scholarship funds had been awarded to more than 2,700 students. She projected the number of students would increase to 3,500 after her office received nominations from the United Methodist schools, colleges and universities.
“Nevertheless, in spite of the number we were able to award, there were still more than 300 eligible United Methodist students for which we did not have any scholarship dollars,” she said.
While statistics show the denomination is “graying,” Current-Felder noted, it is also filled with young people who are active in their local congregations. A $1,000 scholarship could make a difference for some of them in whether they go to college or not.
“How can we get graying congregations to have a vested interest in the future, particularly in the future of their grandchildren?” Current-Felder asked. “How are we investing in the leadership of our church for the present and the future?”