One of the most personally motivating values for me is fairness. When I was 18, I was admitted to my dream college. Getting there and staying there for all four years was a fight to the finish financially. I remember the shock of learning that some of the scholarships I had earned from outside organizations were simply taken by the university and used to reduce the aid they had already offered me. My total cost did not go down at all.

It felt like money contributed by people from my community who were investing in my success was not actually helping me at all. The time and effort I spent to apply for these awards was wasted, and would have been better spent at my part-time job. I later learned this practice has a name, “aid displacement,” and it still feels just as unfair to me now as it did then. I carry that memory with me every time we talk about scholarships at Arlington Community Foundation.

That experience is one reason I care so much about how a community foundation is structured. Our model gives us room to listen, to experiment, and to change course when we see a better way to serve people. We let the community and the facts on the ground in Arlington shape how we show up in any given moment. When we try something and it succeeds, we learn from it. When we try something and it falls short, we treat that as equally important information that helps us get closer to real solutions. Arlington values innovation, so our Community Foundation works to embody that same spirit.

This year, we used that flexibility to protect Arlington scholars from the kind of unfairness I, and so many others, have experienced. For the first time, we implemented a program that allows students to receive their scholarship awards from us in the form of a contribution to a college savings account (a 529 plan). This approach gives students a wider range of expenses that they can legitimately cover with their scholarship, and it does not reduce the financial aid package they receive from their college.

People who contribute to our scholarship funds expect that their donations will help students, not large universities. We share that expectation. By shifting how we deliver some of our awards, we believe we are increasing the real impact of each scholarship for the students who need it most, especially those with significant financial aid packages like the one I had.

That same belief that support should truly benefit the people who need it most is the common thread connecting everyone who shows up, gives, and works alongside the Community Foundation every day.