ClearPath Scholarship
Applications, eligibility, awards, and disbursements
The complete scholarship administration platform: a branded family application portal, geography-specific 300% AMI income verification, a weighted rubric that scores every applicant, a review console built for hundreds of files, and compliant scholarship disbursement.
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 decisions, and §25F disqualifies awards to the relatives of the people making them. An annual conflicts checkbox proves neither.
Every decision has to be explainable
Why was this family funded and that one not? An auditor asks years after the meeting, and the answer cannot live in a committee member's memory.
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correct threshold for each applicant's geography automatically — no spreadsheets, no manual lookups, no risk of using outdated data.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, on a published rubric
The no-earmarking rule requires decisions independent of donor direction, and §25F disqualifies awards to a decision-maker's relatives. Every applicant is scored against a rubric published before the cycle opens, and everyone with a say signs a list of the students they're related to. A confirmed relative can never be published as an award.
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 a bank transfer and hope families submit receipts. ClearPath Scholarship never puts scholarship money in a family's hands: tuition is paid directly to the school in a bulk remittance once the school confirms enrollment, and books, supplies, and technology are ordered on the SGO's own Amazon Business account through PunchOut — the cart comes back as a disbursement request and approval places the order. The audit trail is automatic. No receipt chasing. No after-the-fact verification gaps.
One entity, many state accounts — the way §25F actually works.
A multistate SGO is one 501(c)(3) with a segregated account per state: donors designate a state, money never crosses state lines, and the 90/10 test runs per account. ClearPath models that structure natively instead of bolting states onto a single-state system.
How multistate SGOs work under §25FIncluded across ClearPath Donors, Scholarship, and Shield — activate states as you're listed.
Applications route by residence
Students bind to their home state's program at submit — §25F only lets a state's account fund students who live there, and the platform enforces it before a dollar moves.
Committees per state — or one national committee
Scope reviewers and board voters to specific states, keep ministerial screeners out of the deciding seat, and run per-state award dockets with their own priority waterfalls.
Per-account 90/10, enforced
Each state account tracks qualified contributions, scholarship outflow, and operating releases against the 10% cap — over-cap releases are blocked outright, not flagged after the fact.
Reports by state, roll-up for the board
Per-state worksheets in the audit package, a state-accounts CSV, per-state docket summaries in the board packet, and an entity-wide roll-up view — without ever pooling the money.
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.
Nothing asked that isn't scored
RespectThe application is generated from the rubric itself, so every question a family answers actually moves the award. No paperwork collected out of habit.
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.
From three hundred applications to an award list that holds up.
Approving one scholarship is easy. Deciding a whole cycle — consistently, and with a record that answers an auditor years later — is where spreadsheets break.
- 01Rubric
Publish the scale before applications open
Weighted criteria, the tiebreaker, the ceiling. Start from the standard 100-point scale or build your own from thirteen. Versioned, never edited mid-cycle.
- 02Ceiling
A cap that knows what a seat costs
One fixed maximum, or each student's own tuition by grade. A kindergarten seat and a senior year aren't the same price.
- 03Intake
The form asks what the rubric scores
Questions and their document uploads are generated from the criteria. Nothing is scored on a question nobody asked.
- 04Evidence
Documents read before they count
AI reads each file and says whether it supports the claim it was filed against. Only a person can mark it verified.
- 05Review
A console built for three hundred files, not forty
The whole queue loads at once, so every keystroke is instant. Bulk screening is clerical; judgment stays per-application, attributable, and gated at the sign-offs you require.
- 06Awarding
One plan, four constraints
Returning students first, donor-preferred pools on their own schools, rubric order, the 90% floor — recomputed live. Fund out of order if you must; the deviation is named.
A score you can reproduce
The rubric, its version, and the per-criterion breakdown stay with the application.
Deviations counted, not buried
Publishing freezes an anonymized board packet with every departure from the rules tallied.
Conflicts collected first
Staff, board and reviewers declare and sign their related students. Every application is matched.
Two things publishing refuses
An award to a confirmed relative, and an award above the area income ceiling.
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 purpose-built channels based on expense type, and none of them put money in a family's hands — which eliminates the receipt-management burden entirely.
Direct to school
Tuition & enrollment feesFor tuition, the SGO pays the school directly. Approved tuition for every student at a school is queued and released as one bulk remittance — with a per-student list — once the school confirms enrollment. Funds never pass through the family's hands. The audit trail is an approval in and a payment out — complete, unambiguous, and zero receipt-chasing required.
Amazon Business PunchOut
Books, supplies, technologyFor everyday educational expenses, staff shop on the SGO's own Amazon Business account through a PunchOut session. The cart comes back as a disbursement request tied to the student's award, and approval places the order — on the SGO's account, shipped to the SGO or the school. Every line item is logged. No card in a family's wallet. No receipts. No verification after the fact.
Check to a provider
Tutors & providers outside AmazonFor a tutor or service provider that isn't a school or on Amazon, the SGO issues a check to the provider — never to the family. The request, approval, and settlement are recorded like every other disbursement, so the edge cases carry the same trail as the common ones.
- —Scholarship funds wired straight to the family to spend on their own
- —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 in bulk — no receipt collection at all
- Supplies ordered on the SGO's Amazon Business account — nothing in a family's hands
- Every order line and payment logged automatically with a complete audit trail
- Checks to providers for the edge cases, on the same approval trail
- 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
- Weighted scoring rubric with versioning, a full change log, and score-to-award bands
- Per-student award ceilings drawn from each school's published tuition by grade
- AI document pre-read with extracted names, dates, and amounts — verified only by a person
- Keyboard-driven review console with bulk screening and multi-reviewer sign-off
- Conflict-of-interest register: signed related-student disclosures, matched against every application
- Cycle-wide awarding workbench with live constraint checks and an anonymized board packet at publish
- 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 to schools and providers — bulk school payouts, checks, and Amazon Business PunchOut for supplies
- Qualified expense verification for disbursement approval
- Scholarship renewal processing with cross-year document re-use
ClearPath Scholarship connects to the rest of ClearPath
Talk it through before you decide.
Tell us about your organization and we’ll set up a consultation on your formation path, your state, and the timeline. It costs nothing and there is nothing to sign — and if it’s useful, we’ll walk through the platform on the same call.
What happens next
We read your submission and respond within one business day
A working session, typically 45–60 minutes — your situation, not a sales pitch
Which of the three paths fits, what your state requires, and what the timeline is
You leave with a clear recommendation — including when the answer is to join an SGO rather than form one, or to wait