Scholarships

HFBA is committed to ensuring that all scholarships are awarded through a fair and impartial process. Scholarship Committee members may not benefit personally from the selection of scholarship recipients. For example, Scholarship Committee members may not have family members who are applicants. • The results of the Scholarship Committee and the scholarship award process are at all times subject to HFBA’s Bylaws and Conflict of Interest Policy and other policies and procedures, and the oversight of HFBA’s Board of Directors. • HFBA will take appropriate steps to protect the personal information and confidentiality of applicants and grantees, in accordance with applicable law. • Whenever possible, scholarship awards will be paid directly to the school. This is HFBA’s preferred approach. Payments may be made in either a single disbursement or in incremental disbursements (such as per academic semester). • Scholarship awards will be paid directly to the school only if the school agrees to use the scholarship funds only for the student and only if he or she is enrolled and in good standing and only for permitted expenses (described above). • Scholarships will generally not be paid directly to the individual recipients. • No services may be required of any scholarship recipient. (In other words, scholarships must not be compensation for any services performed by the recipient.) • Scholarship funds that have been, or that appear to have been, diverted from their intended purposes will be investigated, and reasonable and appropriate steps will be taken to recover such funds. Scholarship recipients are not eligible for an additional scholarship if they have not demonstrated that the initial scholarship funds were used for the intended purposes, to the extent required. • HFBA will, and is legally required to, retain full control and discretion over all charitable contributions that it receives. Donors may not earmark or require contributions to go towards a scholarship for a specified individual. Any fundraising conducted by HFBA will not state or imply otherwise. Nonetheless, donations and grants to HFBA may be restricted for use for scholarships, and donors may even recommend certain applicants. However, donations and grants may not be earmarked for specific applicants. HFBA shall have sole discretion and control at all times over the process for selecting scholarship recipients. • These scholarship guidelines have been designed to ensure that scholarship recipients will not be subject to federal income tax on the scholarship funds that they receive. However, HFBA will not provide any personal tax advice to scholarship recipients. Rather, they should consult their personal tax advisors for any needed tax advice. • Appropriate records of the scholarship process will be retained by HFBA, including (without limitation) information and documentation utilized in evaluating applicants, the basis on which scholarship recipients are selected, the name, address and school for each recipient, the party to whom the award was paid, transcripts and other information used to ensure that the scholarship funds were used for the intended purposes, and documentation of efforts undertaken to investigate and recover any funds that may have been diverted from their intended purpose. • These guidelines and the grant application form will be reviewed periodically by HFBA’s Board of Directors to ensure compliance with changes to the law and best practices for charities. • These guidelines are subject to modification from time to time in HFBA’s sole discretion.