Create a scholarship
Target your impact
Establishing a named scholarship fund allows you to make a meaningful and lasting impact on WAEF students. It's a way for you to honor a loved one or an organization while directly investing in the students and educational areas that matter most to you.
- Tax-deductible, as allowed by law
- Used by 70+ families, employers and organizations
- 160+ scholarship funds under WAEF management
A fund starts with one conversation.
Talk with WAEF
Create a Scholarship
Funds for any reason
A company's commitment to its people
A scholarship for the children of your employees says, every spring, that the company sees their families' futures as its own.
Honoring someone you love
Families, colleagues and friends establish memorial funds in the name of a parent, a partner, a child, a grower, a mentor. The fund sends a student to school every year, in their name. 61 memorial funds are at work today.
A family's history in the industry
Some families have grown, packed or shipped Washington fruit for generations. A scholarship in the family name recognizes that history and hands it forward — to students from tree fruit families like your own.
How it works
You set the criteria, WAEF does the rest
WAEF donors set the qualifications and selection criteria of their own scholarships, within IRS guidelines and with board approval. Everything after that — from the application to the award — is handled for you.
Talk with WAEF
One conversation about what you want the fund to do, whom it should reach and how you want it known — in your company's name, a family name or the name of someone you are remembering.
Set the criteria
Working with WAEF staff, you can direct the scholarship to students from a particular community or high school, to students pursuing a related field of study or to the children of your employees — and say what should weigh most, such as scholastics or financial need.
WAEF runs the selection
Students apply once, through the universal application, by March 1. Qualified applications are matched to funds by their criteria, read by volunteer review committees — 45 reviewers this year — and the WAEF Board of Directors confirms every award.
You meet your recipient
Awards are announced in the spring. Recipients and donors meet at the Scholarship Celebration Luncheons that follow, and WAEF keeps both in touch as the student moves through college.
What WAEF handles
- Promotion of the scholarship
- The universal scholarship application
- Application assessment and review
- Recipient selection
- Award disbursement
- Ongoing communication with recipients and donors
- How a new application becomes a scholarship award
Follow one application from submission to award.
Named funds already at work
See WAEF's memorial scholarships
61 memorial funds carry the names of people who shaped Washington tree fruit. Each carries a life, and most carry a specific purpose — a school, a valley, a field of study. The stories are told by the families, colleagues and friends who established them.
- Memorial scholarships
Read the funds, and the people behind them.
Let's talk
Jennifer Witherbee
Executive Director
Jennifer works with every family, company and organization that establishes a fund — from the first conversation through the first award.
Where to go next
Start the conversation
Email Jennifer about establishing a fund — in your company's name, a family's or someone you are remembering.
Talk with WAEFRead the funds families have established in memory of a loved one.
Memorial scholarshipsMake a bequest or give appreciated stock or an IRA distribution.
Legacy givingGive to the scholarship fund directly, today.
DonateQuestions
What donors ask
The short answers. For anything these do not cover, Jennifer's number is above.