Nearly a million dollars a year, from a staff of one: the Marti Foundation on AwardSpring

The Marti Foundation is a private 501(c)(3) in Cleburne, Texas (Johnson County), just south of Fort Worth, founded in 1989 by a husband and wife who endowed it so completely that the foundation has never needed to fundraise. It awards a single scholarship, the Marti Foundation Scholarship, and follows its recipients to two-year and four-year schools, public and private, in roughly 35 states. Running all of it is Dr. Robert K. Riza, whose 28 years in higher education run from admissions and athletics through a deanship, a vice chancellorship, and the presidency of Clarendon College. He also has a personal connection to the scholarship: his daughter earned one in 2014, back when applying meant twelve pages of paper.

A twelve-page application, unchanged since 1989

That paper application was the reason the board hired him. The process behind it moved slowly enough that scholarship checks sometimes did not go out until late September. Dr. Riza did what a former college president would do: he called peers and asked what their foundations used. The trail led to AwardSpring, and the board conversation was short. The cost came in at a fraction of what board members had braced for, and the founders' grandson, an attorney on the board, ended the discussion with a line Dr. Riza still quotes: you have to be comfortable with it, not us. If you like it, buy it.

The whole foundation, from one desk

Today the foundation has no staff. Dr. Riza runs recruitment, review, awards, disbursement, and board reporting himself, and the operation travels with him; he can run the whole thing from home when he needs to. Applications are scored by a volunteer review committee of retired college presidents, each application graded by three reviewers against rubrics he distributes through the platform, and he still reads every application personally. When the board chair, who runs computer services, learned that the entire infrastructure investment behind this was an extra $80 monitor, he compared it to the three-person office that once couldn't get checks out on time, and told him to buy a third one if he wanted.

"If I didn't come to work today, I could run the whole foundation from my house."

Dr. Robert K. Riza, Executive Director, The Marti Foundation

"My board chair put it best: we used to have three people in this office who couldn't get checks out on time. Now it's me and an eighty-dollar monitor, and the checks go out January 2nd."

Dr. Robert K. Riza, Executive Director, The Marti Foundation

The numbers he can finally see

Every cycle since the switch is on the record, start to finish:

The falling award count is deliberate. This cycle the board raised the scholarship from $1,500 to $2,500 per semester, its first increase in twelve years, and Dr. Riza tightened the cohort to 60 students chosen to persist. So far 59 of the 60 are confirmed enrolled with checks written. He also moved all disbursements to January 2nd so the foundation's giving finally tracks to a single calendar year: since January 2nd, the foundation has disbursed $930,000 in scholarships, on pace to approach $1 million.

AI under human review, proven in the field

This cycle the foundation brought back an essay requirement, to differentiate a strong applicant pool and to put AwardSpring's AI essay scoring to work. He wrote the rubric, the AI scored every essay against it, and he personally read the outliers at both ends. The test came quickly: a student with an excellent transcript scored low on the essay. The AI flagged it, Dr. Riza read the essay himself, agreed with the score, and the award went elsewhere. When questions came, the decision was easy to explain, because a person had made it with better information. As he puts it, the AI decides where his eyeball time goes. It does not decide who gets a scholarship.

"I wrote the rubric and the AI scored every essay against it. I read the outliers. It puts my eyeball time where it matters. It doesn't decide who gets a scholarship; I do."

Dr. Robert K. Riza, Executive Director, The Marti Foundation

What he tells the foundations that call

Three foundations have already called him for a reference, and his answer is consistent: this is the product he went looking for. The twelve-page application moved online in a form students can actually finish, the fields that never belonged on it are gone, and the platform is right-sized for a foundation, not student services software built for a campus. He uses maybe 15 percent of what the platform can do, and it is exactly the 15 percent he needs, with support that answers when he calls. The rest of the story is in the checks: nearly a million dollars, out the door on time, from one desk.

“AwardSpring made it possible for me to do what I set out to do: make it easier on our students to apply, and manage all of it without hiring staff.”

Dr. Robert K. Riza, Executive Director, The Marti Foundation