WHEREAS, as the Board of Directors of Future Aviators Charitable Foundation, Inc. (the “Foundation”) recognizes the need for a scholarship policy to govern its actions and decisions concerning its provision of scholarships, it hereby adopts and establishes the following policies:
The purpose of this Scholarship Policy is to protect the Foundation when it is contemplating providing scholarships to individuals to further their aviation education. This policy is intended to supplement, but not replace, any applicable state and federal laws governing scholarship applicable to charities.
This Policy establishes the guidelines, procedures, and requirements for reviewing and managing any scholarship applications and offerings in accordance with legal requirements. It applies to all directors, officers, employees, and volunteers of the Foundation. All directors, officers, employees, and volunteers must read, understand, and agree to abide by the principles and rules set out herein.
The scholarship process for the Foundation is governed by a Scholarship Committee that shall be responsible for upholding this Policy.
The Scholarship Committee shall uphold the Foundation’s general policies on ethics and confidentiality regarding all scholarship applicants and potential applicants of the scholarship pool. All scholarship requests shall be made through the office of the Foundation. No contact shall be made by an individual Director or Committee
member outside the site review process. The potential pool of applicants as well as the pool of scholarship applicants shall remain anonymous. No contact shall be made in preparation for applicant interviews, including coaching or assistance of any type in the application process.
Scholarship Committee eligibility should be reviewed annually and recusal is necessary whenever the Foundation’s pool of potential scholarship applicants includes a family member (including spouse, brothers, and sisters by whole or half blood, ancestors, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, whether biological, adoptive, or by marriage). The recusal is required from the entire scholarship nominating process for that pool. This would include all meetings, discussions, debates and votes regarding the nominations.
The Foundation staff will provide the necessary scholarship applications as well necessary background information to conduct the appropriate evaluation of the scholarship applicants no less than one week in advance. Prior to the beginning of the Scholarship Committee meeting, the Scholarship Committee member is asked to be prepared with the overall evaluation of the scholarship applicant and prepared to discuss the applicants to determine the finalists and scholarship recipients.
Scholarship Committee term limits will be determined by the Foundation’s Board.
Scholarship Committee member selection is based on the following criteria:
Interest in the Foundation and its goals;
Ability to work with people;
Professional skills or personal expertise and qualities that are beneficial to the Foundation, able to maintain the necessary code of conduct to evaluate and discuss the scholarship applicants without impairment of judgment; and Willing and able to dedicate the necessary time to work on behalf of the Foundation.
The Scholarship Committee shall evaluate scholarship applications and conduct a brief interview in an effort to recommend the scholarship recipients to the Foundation Board. The Foundation staff validates that all recusals, conflicts of interest and responsibilities of Committee members are satisfied. Committee members receive the packet of instructions and the scholarship applications 10-15 days prior to the Scholarship Committee meeting. After evaluating each scholarship applicant individually, the Committee members convene to discuss the applications, notes, and score sheets. The Scholarship Committee determines finalists who will be invited to proceed to the interview.
Finalists are notified in writing that they have been chosen for an interview with instructions to contact the Foundation office to select a time for their interview.
The Committee members conduct the interview then evaluate the finalists individually after each interview. Each Scholarship Committee member scores the individual interviews then includes the interview score with the finalist’s overall score.
In the event of a tie, the Scholarship Committee will combine the scores of the interview and academic performance. The candidates with the highest combined scores will be the recipients. In the event of a second tier tie, the Scholarship Committee will vote by a show of hands.
The Foundation Board receives notification of the selected recipients from the Scholarship Committee; and then works with the recipients on processing the scholarships.
In addition to ensuring compliance with the scholarship rules and regulations, the Foundation shall ensure that it is compliant with all other applicable U.S. statutes, executive orders, and regulations.
The Foundation shall conduct periodic reviews to ensure that it is operating in a manner consistent with the relevant scholarship rules and regulations to avoid jeopardizing its tax-exempt status.
Each director, officer, employee and volunteer shall annually affirm that such person: