One school? Join our SGO instead of building one.
This is the easiest decision on this website, and we would rather just tell you: a single campus should not form its own Scholarship Granting Organization. Federal law bars donors from earmarking gifts and requires awards to reach ten or more students who do not all attend the same school — so the entity you would spend months building cannot promise your families anything, and cannot serve only them.
Joining an SGO we already operate takes days to onboard, costs nothing to start, and leaves every federal obligation with the SGO.
Cost to start
$0
No setup fee, no subscription, no minimum. Nothing to form, certify, or audit.
Time to onboard
Days
Once the program opens: get approved and your branded page and QR code go live. Forming your own runs to months.
Your ongoing job
1 click
Confirm a student who named your school is enrolled. Income, awards, receipts, and the audit stay with the SGO.
Why forming your own does not do what you want it to do
This is not a difficulty argument. For a single campus, forming an SGO is the wrong instrument for the job — here is precisely why.
You cannot promise your donors anything
Federal law prohibits earmarking. Your parents give, an independent committee at the SGO you formed awards on need, and there is no mechanism to keep those dollars with your students. Donors who expected otherwise become a compliance problem.
You cannot fund only your own families
Section 25F requires awards to reach ten or more students who do not all attend the same school. The bar is not ten schools — but the entity you formed to help your own campus legally cannot award exclusively to it, and a committee running that close to the line is not one an auditor will call arm's-length.
Months and a real board
Formation, IRS recognition, state certification, segregated accounts per state, a seated board, an independent scholarship committee, and an annual audit — before the first gift clears.
Someone has to own compliance
90/10 accounting, per-state reporting, income verification, records retention, and arm's-length award documentation are ongoing staff work. On a single-campus staff, that person does not exist.
Everything a school actually needs, and none of the entity
Days to onboard, not a school year to build
When the program opens, a short profile and an approval is the whole setup. Schools that take the formation route instead are typically not accepting gifts until well into the following year.
A page your community will actually use
Your colors, your logo, your story, and a community goal that fills in as gifts arrive — plus a print-ready QR code for the gym wall and back-to-school night, and an embeddable widget for your own site.
Tuition paid straight to your school
When the committee awards a scholarship to one of your students, the SGO pays the tuition directly to the school — no invoicing a family for money they are still waiting on — and every disbursement is on a ledger you can see.
Your families' preference is visible
Donors name your school as preferred, and the scholarship committee sees that pool alongside the students from your school who applied. Preferences guide awards where need allows. They can never bind them — for any SGO.
Every obligation stays with the SGO
Income verification, award decisions, disbursement, receipts, state reports, the 90/10 test, and the annual audit are the SGO's problem. Your school is not the entity on the filing.
One recurring task, one click
Confirm that a student who named your school is actually enrolled. You see a name and a grade — never a family's income or documents. That is the whole ongoing commitment.
When forming your own is the right call
Plenty of organizations should form an SGO, and we build the platform they run it on — or run it for them, if they would rather own the SGO than staff one. If any of these describe you, you are reading the wrong page — start with the honest side-by-side comparison instead.
Compare all three modelsYou are a diocese, a school network, or a consortium with campuses in more than one community already in the fold.
You want your board to set the scholarship criteria — who qualifies, what counts as a priority, how large an award is.
You want the administrative share of every gift to be your organization's revenue.
You have, or will hire, someone whose actual job includes compliance and reporting.
Common questions
Can we join today?
Not yet — the partner-school program is coming soon. The SGO that partner schools will join is being stood up ahead of January 1, 2027, when the federal credit begins. What you can do today is add your school to the early-access list: it costs nothing, commits you to nothing, and we come back to those schools first with the partner agreement. You can also just reach out through the contact form.
Can a single school start its own SGO?
It can form the entity, but it cannot use it the way most single schools imagine. Section 25F prohibits donors from earmarking gifts to any particular school, and requires the SGO to award scholarships to ten or more students who do not all attend the same school. The bar is not ten schools — but an SGO that funds only its own campus does not qualify, and no arm's-length committee can promise a donor that a gift stays with their child. A single campus ends up with an entity, a board, and an audit, in exchange for a program it does not control.
What does joining cost?
Nothing to start. There is no setup fee, no subscription, and no minimum. The SGO carries the cost of running the program — certification, compliance, receipts, and the annual audit — from the operating allowance Section 25F permits, never from the 90% owed to students.
How long does it take to go live?
Once the program is open, days: you submit a short profile, the SGO vets and approves your school, and your branded giving page, QR code, family apply link, and portal go live. The program is not open yet — early-access schools are onboarded first, ahead of the January 1, 2027 start of the credit. Forming your own SGO is a months-long process either way — formation, IRS recognition, state certification, segregated bank accounts, and a seated board.
Do our donors still get the tax credit?
Yes, exactly the same credit. A gift through your school's page goes to a certified SGO, so the donor gets the same dollar-for-dollar federal credit of up to $1,700 ($3,400 filing jointly) they would get giving anywhere else. Nothing about the credit depends on who runs the SGO.
Can our donors direct their gift to our students?
They can name your school as their preferred school, and the committee sees those preferred dollars next to the students from your school who applied. But no donor anywhere can earmark a gift to a school or a student — that is a federal prohibition, and it applies identically whether you join an SGO or form one.
What if we outgrow this?
Then you form your own SGO, and we will help you do it — and run it for you if you would rather not staff it. Joining is not a lock-in: you have not created a legal entity, signed a multi-year contract, or taken on obligations you have to unwind. Many schools use the partner model to prove demand in their community first, then form later with real numbers in hand.
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