Their Story

For the last decade, The Scholarship Academy (TSA), has been working with families to empower them to take ownership of the financial aid process.

Their work started with offering a Scholarship Boot Camp course to low-income families in Washington DC and Atlanta. From 2006-2009, they made sure each family was able to create a 4-year college funding plan, one that enabled them to not only get into college, but made sure they were able to financially stay there. Their unique approach to private college funding earned them recognition from organizations such as Echoing Green and the Ashoka Changemakers, as well as features in publications such as Black Enterprise and the NAACP Crisis Magazine.

In 2010, they shifted their work from supporting individual families to working directly with high schools and youth-serving organizations to implement their 16-module curriculum on a larger scale. Through a series of counselor trainings, and now, online courses offered through through Virtual Scholarship Center, they help organizations create healthier financial aid cultures- environments where financial aid doesn’t simply happen to low-income families, but they are able to create proactive financial aid plans. To date, they've impacted more than 15,000 families, primarily in Georgia, New York, Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, PA.

Over the last few years, their partnerships have included Atlanta Public Schools, the New York College Access for All Consortium, Clayton County Public Schools, Dekalb County Public schools, and the GEAR UP Georgia network.