Two boxes of paper and a broken scanner: how the St. Vrain Education Foundation rebuilt scholarships

The St. Vrain Education Foundation is the 501(c)(3) supporting the St. Vrain Valley School District, based in Longmont, Colorado, and supporting the communities of Dacono, Erie, Firestone, Frederick, Longmont, Lyons, Mead, and Niwot. Tammy Palombo has been part of the foundation team for nearly nine years, with scholarships always among her responsibilities; two years ago she was promoted to Program Manager and now oversees all foundation programs. Alongside student scholarships she manages the 529 Jump program, which encourages saving for college starting in elementary school, the Educator Grants program, which funds ideas that inspire innovation and enhance student learning, and the Supplies for Success program, which makes sure every student starts the school year with the supplies they need.

The breaking point

When she started, scholarships ran on paper. Applications came in incomplete, and students regularly applied for awards they could never receive. Then came the spring of 2020. With offices closing, Tammy was handed two copy-paper boxes of applications and a review board that suddenly could meet only online. She scanned more than 50,000 pages herself. Somewhere before the end, the scanner broke.

The board’s response was the right one: this moves online, permanently.

Halfway online

The foundation’s first online tool digitized the application itself, and stopped there. Scholarship reviews and awarding were still a manual process, run on spreadsheets and payment information students submitted by email. The paper was gone, but the work remained.

For the 2023-2024 award cycle, the foundation moved to AwardSpring, and the difference was scope: application, review, and awarding in one system. When awards are finalized, the list goes straight to the accountant for QuickBooks and check processing. The cycle finally ran end to end.

What one person can carry now

The 2025-2026 scholarship cycle awarded $418,000 across 233 awards to 161 students, up from $253,000 across 196 awards to 145 students the year before. When Tammy started nearly nine years ago, the number was $24,500.

She is clear about what drove that: the community. High schools across the district moved their paper scholarships onto the online application, which opened opportunities for students; booster clubs, education foundations, staff-funded awards, and other school connections at five of the district’s nine high schools now run through the platform. Families, community, and business partners added new funds, including trade-focused scholarships for future electricians, plumbers, and energy workers. The portfolio now spans 55 individual funds, and the foundation’s goal of awarding $500,000 a year is within reach. What the platform changed is that a single person can administer all of it, and that a student who once saw two or three opportunities now sees ten or twelve they are eligible to apply for, from one application.

Finding the students who stall

637 students started applications this cycle and 459 finished. Tammy works that gap deliberately: progress reports show her exactly where students drop off, and the data drove real changes, like removing the letter-of-recommendation barrier from the general application and asking for a financial need statement while making the FAFSA optional. Scheduled emails and text messages nudge students at deadlines, including long-weekend reminders that encourage students to complete their applications.

The review board came around

Her reviewers are community volunteers, former scholarship recipients, and school representatives. Some preferred passing paper around a table, and every one of them has since converted: applications arrive consistent and complete, the platform is easy for volunteers to navigate, and large-scholarship reviews now run through built-in multi-panel review. New scholarship funders arrive with the same worry and become converts after one cycle.

"Don't second guess working with the AwardSpring team!"

That is Tammy’s advice to any foundation weighing the move. After four years with AwardSpring, her experience is that the team works toward finding a solution to every unique request, which was not true of the previous platform. And the support has been personal, from the CEO sitting down with her feedback at a national conference to a customer success team that built her workarounds before the features existed.

"AwardSpring has always worked toward finding a solution to unique requests and has never told me 'no, that is not possible.' The customer support team has been a great source of help in working through finding a solution to any situation."

Tammy Palombo, Program Manager, St. Vrain Education Foundation