ClearPath Scholarship
Applications, eligibility, awards, and disbursements
The complete scholarship administration platform: a branded family application portal, geography-specific 300% AMI income verification, award decision support tools, returning student priority tracking, and scholarship disbursement processing.
Scholarship administration is where federal compliance is most visible to families — and where errors have the most direct human consequences.
Verification varies by geography
Income eligibility runs against 300% of area median gross income — a calculation that changes by county and metro area with current HUD data.
Awards must be arm's-length
The no-earmarking rule requires genuinely independent award decisions, with returning-student and sibling priority tracked and enforced throughout.
Disbursement is the hardest piece
Every dollar must be traceable to a qualified expense with a documented audit trail. Collecting receipts after the fact creates gaps that grow with every award — and cash with no controls is a liability waiting for an audit.
Each of these is a discrete compliance requirement — and general-purpose software handles none of them correctly.
of area median income — the eligibility line, county by county
compliance-enforced disbursement channels
One application. Two languages. Same everything.
Families run the entire portal in English or Spanish with one toggle — applications, receipts, and award letters included. Try it.
Interactive — go ahead, click around.
Step 2 of 4 · Household income
Income verification
Connect payroll or bank records — verification completes in minutes. Prefer paper? Upload documents instead.
Why it matters
Income verification that doesn't guess
The 300% AMI threshold varies by county and metro area based on current HUD data. ClearPath Scholarship applies the correct threshold for each applicant's geography automatically — no spreadsheets, no manual lookups, no risk of using outdated data.
Arm's-length awards, documented
The no-earmarking rule requires that award decisions be genuinely independent of donor direction. ClearPath Scholarship's award decision workflow is designed to create and document that separation at every step — not just in policy, but in the operational record.
Returning student priority, enforced automatically
Federal rules require priority for returning scholarship recipients and their siblings. ClearPath Scholarship tracks enrollment status, renewal eligibility, and sibling relationships — and enforces priority automatically, so your board's award decisions are always defensible.
Disbursement that can't be misused
Most SGOs send an ACH transfer and hope families submit receipts. ClearPath Scholarship routes funds through compliance-enforced channels: direct-to-school payment for tuition, and a restricted prepaid card — programmed to decline at non-qualifying merchants — for books, tutoring, and supplies. The audit trail is automatic. No receipt chasing. No after-the-fact verification gaps.
Equity of access isn't a footnote. It's a design principle.
A scholarship program only reaches the families its application reaches. ClearPath Scholarship is built so that language, paperwork, and process never decide who gets funded — and so the families you serve experience your program as fair, fast, and humane.
Spanish-first portals
AccessThe application, giving and pledge pages, receipts, and award letters all run bilingually — 🇺🇸 English / 🇪🇸 Español — with a single toggle. Families apply in the language they're comfortable in, no translated PDFs, no phone-a-friend.
Automated income verification
VerificationFamilies connect payroll or bank records through providers like Plaid, Argyle, or Pinwheel and verification completes in minutes — with a document-upload path for families who prefer it.
Household & sibling grouping
PriorityApplications from the same household are grouped automatically, so the federally required sibling priority is enforced by the system — not by a reviewer's memory.
Eligibility pre-screen
A non-blocking pre-screen tells families whether they're likely to qualify before they invest an evening in the full application.
Appeals, handled in the open
FairnessDenied families can appeal directly in the portal. Staff review, overturn, and reopen with the full record attached — no inbox archaeology, no lost appeals.
A waitlist that works for families
As awards are declined or funds free up, the next ranked applicant is offered automatically and notified immediately. Nobody waits on a list nobody is watching.
Award acceptance & enrollment gates
Families e-sign their award acceptance and confirm enrollment in the portal — and disbursement is gated on both, so money never moves on an assumption.
Cross-year document re-use
RenewalRenewing families don't re-upload last year's accepted documents. Renewal takes minutes, not evenings — and renewal rates show it.
Getting money to families is the hardest compliance problem in the entire system.
Approving a scholarship is the easy part. Disbursing the funds compliantly — with an audit trail that proves every dollar reached a qualified educational expense — is where most SGOs accumulate real liability. The default approach, sending a bank transfer and collecting receipts after the fact, breaks at any meaningful scale. ClearPath routes funds through three purpose-built channels based on expense type, eliminating most receipt management burden entirely.
Direct to school
Tuition & enrollment feesFor tuition, we pay the school directly via ACH. The school submits an invoice; the SGO approves it in the platform; the payment executes. Funds never pass through the family's hands. The audit trail is an invoice in and a payment out — complete, unambiguous, and zero receipt-chasing required.
Restricted prepaid card
Books, tutoring, supplies, technologyFor everyday educational expenses, families receive a prepaid card programmed to decline at non-qualifying merchant categories. A family cannot spend scholarship funds at a restaurant or clothing store — the card physically won't work there. Every approved transaction is logged in real time. No receipts. No verification after the fact.
ACH with receipt verification
Special services & edge casesFor expenses that don't fit the other channels — specialized therapy, adaptive equipment, small vendors without card terminals — families pay out of pocket and submit documentation through the family portal. We review and approve before the next disbursement is released. Nothing moves without verification.
- —Wire transfer deposited to the family's bank account
- —Families instructed to spend on qualified expenses and save receipts
- —Staff chase missing documentation for weeks before state annual reviews
- —Every receipt manually reviewed to confirm the expense actually qualifies
- —Records scattered across email threads, binders, and shared folders
- —Compliance gaps surface during audits, not before
- Tuition paid directly to the school — no receipt collection at all
- Card spending auto-declined at non-qualifying merchants in real time
- Every transaction logged automatically with a complete audit trail
- Receipt portal handles only the small fraction of edge-case expenses
- All disbursement records organized by student and award period
- SGO staff spend minutes on disbursement review, not hours
Everything Scholarship covers
ClearPath Scholarship is a complete solution — not a module you configure yourself or a feature set you have to maintain. Every item below is included and actively managed.
Ongoing monthly fee. Scales with applicant and scholarship volume.
- Branded bilingual (English/Spanish) scholarship application portal
- Income verification engine calibrated to 300% AMI by applicant geography
- Automated income verification via payroll and bank-data providers
- Eligibility pre-screening and documentation collection workflow
- Award decision support tools with arm's-length documentation
- Household grouping with returning student and sibling priority enforcement
- Appeals processing and automated waitlist management
- Award acceptance e-signatures and enrollment confirmation gates
- Scholarship disbursement processing to families
- Qualified expense verification for disbursement approval
- Scholarship renewal processing with cross-year document re-use
ClearPath Scholarship connects to the rest of ClearPath
See the platform live. Then decide.
Tell us about your organization and we’ll set up a live demo — the real product, loaded with sample data — alongside a consultation on your formation path, state, and timeline.
What happens next
We review your submission and respond within one business day
Live platform demo — the actual product on sample data, typically 45–60 minutes
Diagnostic consultation on your formation path, state requirements, and timeline
You leave with a clear scope and recommendation — even if the answer is to partner rather than form