Policies

CCSA's purpose is to award scholarships to graduating seniors from the Chico community.

We maintain various policies and procedures to ensure that students, recipients, donors and other stakeholders are treated consistently, fairly and with integrity. Following are the critical portions of those more detailed policies and procedures.

Scholarship Size
We strive to give many small scholarships rather than fewer large ones. Our current base scholarship is $1000.

Donor Advised Funds
Funds are set up as donor advised, and donors are encouraged to help select potential recipients for their named scholarships. We attempt to document donor selection so their wishes will be kept in the future. No guarantee is available that a desired student will in fact be awarded the scholarship.

Payment of Scholarships
Checks are only mailed to the financial aid office of qualified educational institutions. Students will not directly receive their scholarship.

Unclaimed Scholarships
Not all students will enroll in qualified institutions. After three years, unclaimed scholarships will be cancelled, and the monies will be available for subsequent graduating seniors. When possible, donors will have input on the new selection.

Returned Scholarships
When a school returns unspent money to CCSA, the monies will be available for subsequent graduating seniors. When possible, original donors will have input on the new selection.

Investment of Funds
All long-term monies are pooled together. Donors are not involved in the investment of their individual donations. CCSA's goal is to make 5% on its investments over time.

Internal Spend Policy
CCSA's policy is to spend four percent (4%) of a fund's average market value over the preceding 12 quarters. CCSA performs the distributable income calculation in spring of each year, based on the quarters ending the previous December.

Endowment of Funds
Named funds whose balance is over our threshold will receive an allocation of income and losses from investments. This threshold is currently $25,000. We intend these funds to be permanent, generally earning 4% or the base $1000 scholarship. Funds intending to be endowed are given three years to exceed the threshold. After this time, scholarships will be awarded based on our spend policy until the fund is depleted.

Cost Control
We strive to keep our administrative and fundraising costs to an absolute minimum.

Board Member Policies
The association's board is operated in a professional manner, consistent with a local charitable organization. Various policies are in place including Whistleblowers, conflict of interests and other relevant procedures and guidelines.

Refunds
Since donations are tax deductible, all donations are non-refundable.