In my role as the Vice President of College Success at OneFuture Coachella Valley, I have overseen the systematic alignment and leveraging of more than $16 million in scholarships for low income students in the region.  Utilizing a collective impact approach to regional scholarship giving and financial aid for college, our collaborative of business, education and civic partners have developed a Regional Plan for College and Career Success that includes the formation of a Financial Aid Committee to advance the following goals, among others:

1) FAFSA / Dream Act Application Completions Rate Increase: In 2011, our collaborative developed a FAFSA / Dream Act Completion Campaign to increase completion rates among graduating high school seniors in the Coachella Valley. Participating schools have the opportunity to win cash prizes for reaching the highest FAFSA/Dream Act completion rates in their school district and regionally. The overall winner of the competition receives an additional cash prize and the covetted FAFSA/Dream Act Competition Cup. Since 2011, the region has increased FAFSA/Dream Act completion rates from 40% up to 72%, which has helped students potentially capture more than $100 million in state and federal financial aid.

2) College & Career (C2) Navigator Online System: Developed as a community solution to aligning and maximizing the impact of scholarships in the valley, the C2 Navigator streamlines the scholarship application process by reducing redundancies through a common data sharing platform. In addition, the centralization of scholarship data allows the collaborative to study and address the disparities in scholarship funding in the region, including data reports for school districts and high schools to track applications started, completed and submitted.