the importance of scholarships

Get & Give. 

Did you get a scholarship when you went to college? I did. Actually, eleven of them. I had to piece together $1,000 here and $500 there to cover the costs of going to school. The truth is, without those scholarships, I would have never been able to afford it. 

For me to GET a college degree, someone had to GIVE. 

Costs Are Up! 

Tuition at 4-year public universities increased more than 75% every decade from the 1970s through the 2000s.

All private, for-profit postsecondary institutions increased tuition inflation 219% from 2010 to 2023.

And Scholarships are Scarce!

The likelihood of Receiving Scholarships: Only one in eight college students receive a scholarship, and full-ride scholarships are awarded to just 0.1% of students. 

Average Scholarship Amounts: 97% of students who receive scholarships get $2,500 or less, with only 0.2% receiving scholarships worth $25,000 or more.

Over 1,200 Currently in College

Did you know that there are over 1,200 Choose901 Alumni currently in college? 

We actually just celebrated our 600th college graduate, but we have twice as many still in school and over 300 planning to start college in 2025. 

100% of our 2,600 Choose901 Alumni have been accepted to college before high school graduation, but many can not afford the full price of tuition. 

They can’t GET an education without others who can GIVE. 

So Here is the Plan… 

At City Leadership, we are helping college hopefuls GET scholarships by helping you GIVE scholarships. 

Does your company, family, church, or community already offer a scholarship? GREAT! We are here to help you maximize this gift.

We have been piloting a scholarship management program for two years where we help you handle the marketing, application and selection process for your scholarships. 

An additional benefit for you, when the scholarship is received by one of the Choose901 Alumni, we will actually report back to you the progress of the student you are supporting. This very rare. 

Most tuition gifts are given and students are never heard from again. But we can actually help you follow your investment into the next generation through their education journey.  Hopefully this will be encouraging to the giver and inspire future scholarships for others. 

Interested in Starting a Scholarship? 

We can help with this too. 

You can be specific or general. It can be a lot or a little. 

If you have any interest in this at all, please contact me and lets figure it out together. 

Checkout this story about Steve Woodyard of Woodyard Realty.  He created a scholarship of $10,000 for us to manage. It is inspired his staff so much, one of his teammates added an extra $5,000 for a total of $15,000 in scholarships!

Here are the initial winners of the 2024 scholarships. The long term winners are not only the recipients, but all of us as fellow Memphians!  

Thank you for believing in Memphis. 

It means everything to me to be able to journey with you to help create a growing, improving and more loving Memphis.  

Thank you for investing in the 901 and I hope you enjoy it here this week too!