Launching Santa Barbara Scholars

In 1962, a group of education advocates came together to help area students pay for college or vocational school. Just six months after its first meeting, the nascent group had 35 board members and held its first fundraising event, a New Year’s Eve party that raised almost $350 for scholarships. In the summer of 1963, it granted nine $100 book awards to local students. By the end of the decade, it had awarded 1,000 scholarships. 

Today, the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara is the nation’s largest community-based provider of college scholarships. With more than 500 scholarship funds under management, the organization has now cumulatively awarded in excess of $175 million in scholarships to some 66,000 Santa Barbara County students pursuing vocational, undergraduate, or advanced degrees.

For many students and families, completing a postsecondary degree has only become more complicated. College is now a larger investment than ever and paying for it can be bewildering and overwhelming. Pell Grants and Cal Grants, FAFSA forms, institutional aid, scholarships, loans, and financial aid offers can look very different from one school to another. For a family that has never been through the process, knowing where to begin can be its own barrier. Overcoming that barrier is at the heart of what the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara does.

This year, the Scholarship Foundation awarded $8.46 million in scholarships to nearly 2,300 county students. Sixty-two percent of recipients are first-generation college students; 54 percent are Pell Grant-eligible.

“When you look behind those numbers, you see students who are the first in their family to set foot on a college campus, and parents who are stretching every dollar to make that possible,” said Foundation President and CEO Calen Ouellette. “Our job is to make sure that a student’s talent and determination, not their zip code or their family’s income, are what decide whether they get to pursue their education.”

Opening More Doors For More Students

In addition to scholarships, the Foundation provides free professional financial aid advising to students and families. Four full-time bilingual financial-aid advisors, complemented by administrators and support personnel, reach roughly 20,000 students and parents across Santa Barbara County each year. Advisors travel to area schools, hold workshops, assist with financial-aid forms, explain award letters, and help families understand what money is available and how to maximize it – all at no cost to residents.

Each year, however, there is more demand for scholarships than the Foundation can meet.

“Somewhere in Santa Barbara County right now is a student who did everything right, kept their grades up, filled out every form, earned their spot, and still might not make it to a campus, simply because we ran out of scholarships to give,” Ouellette said. “That’s the gap we’re asking this community to help us close.”