The Foreign Service Journal, March 2012

The scholarship program is funded by taking 5 percent of the average five- year balance of the portfolio as of Dec. 31 of each year to provide for the scholarships and for administrative costs, a practice that is well within the industry standard for this type of fund. In 2008, the Scholarship Fund do- nated $37,500 to the Fallen Diplomats Scholarship Fund, which is adminis- tered by the Federal Employees As- sistance and Education Fund to help provide scholarships to the eight chil- dren who lost a Foreign Service par- ent to terrorism between 1998 and 2003. Also in 2008, the AFSA Governing Board approved a renovation to the AFSA headquarters building, which involved a loan of $1.2 million from the Scholarship Fund to be paid back over 10 years. I am glad to report that AFSA has been repaying the loan in fine fashion. A Vital Committee The Scholarship Committee, which manages the overall program, is com- posed of representatives from all of the Foreign Service agencies, as well as from DACOR, AAFSW and the AFSA Governing Board. Its most im- portant work is to take the annual sum approved by the AFSA Governing Board, and determine the number and amount of scholarships to be awarded. The committee strives to maximize the financial aid grants to the neediest of applicants. It also un- derstands the importance of recogniz- ing merit, and tries to balance the two programs. Each year the committee also re- views the administration of the merit and financial aid programs. With the need-based awards, usually only small tweaks may be needed. But the com- mittee works continually to make the merit awards as fair a competition as possible between students from widely different high schools — rang- ing from overseas institutions that sometimes provide instruction in a language other than English and home-schooled students to those at some of the large, excellent schools in the Washington, D.C., area. Committee members and other volunteers serve as judges for the competition, a time-consuming but 36 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / M A R C H 2 0 1 2 The Scholarship Fund is an IRS Section 501 (c) (3), tax-exempt entity that is separate from AFSA.