Scholarships

Give the gift of education.

When you create a scholarship, you give the gift of education and provide critical assistance for talented students who otherwise could not afford to attend California College of the Arts.

The students you support today will be the artists, writers, architects, and designers of tomorrow—influencing what we see, use, and experience.

Your investment in CCA students will pay the highest of dividends by giving them the opportunity to fulfill their boundless potential. Your gift may be measured in dollars, but the reward translates to lives forever changed and dreams fulfilled.

California College of the Arts is pleased to provide individuals, corporations, and foundations with the opportunity to support two types of named scholarships: endowed and annual.

Endowed Scholarships

Endowed scholarship funds start at $25,000. The larger the gift to scholarship endowment, the greater the impact it has in relieving the tuition burden for talented students.

Endowed scholarships are invested in their entirety, and awards are made from interest earned. The college currently earmarks 5 percent of the corpus value for scholarship awards. Any interest earned above 5 percent is reinvested into the principal, which increases the amount in the fund and allows it to earn more from year to year.

See a list of graduate and undergraduate scholarships that are available.

Annual Scholarships

An annual scholarship is a gift that is awarded in its entirety in the year it is given. We suggest a minimum gift of $5,000, so that the award will have a significant impact on tuition expenses. The scholarship may be given to one student or divided among several. Annual scholarships provide for students on a yearly basis; to continue the award, the gift must be renewed each year.

Scholarship gifts of less than $5,000 are placed into our Collegewide Scholarship Fund and awarded to deserving students during the year in which the gift is received.

Donor Benefits

Can the scholarship be named? For both endowed and annual scholarships, the donor may decide the name of the award. Many people choose to name their scholarship in honor or in memory of a family member, friend, CCA graduate, or faculty member.

May I establish awarding criteria for the scholarship? Scholarship gifts are most effective when left open-ended, so that the college may award funds to students who are the most deserving. However, donors may create a broad set of criteria. For example, you may restrict the scholarship to students in a particular major, or to undergraduate or graduate studies. By law, donors may not specify or select a specific student recipient.

Are scholarships based on merit or financial need? To ensure that the students who most need financial aid receive scholarships, California College of the Arts prefers that scholarships be awarded based on a combination of merit and financial need. As over 75 percent of CCA students receive some form of financial aid, scholarships lessen their financial burden by offsetting loans or out-of-pocket expenses.

Who selects the scholarship recipients? For need- and merit-based scholarships, the Financial Aid Office selects students from a pool of qualified candidates. To be eligible for a named scholarship, students must demonstrate financial need and maintain a grade point average of at least 3.0 on a 4-point scale. Merit-based scholarships are awarded through our prize competition programs.

Will I have the opportunity to meet my scholarship student(s)? Each fall, we host a dinner to honor our scholarship donors and student recipients. If you cannot attend that event, we would be happy to arrange another time for you to meet the student(s) who have benefited from your generosity.

Each year, we will send you a report on your scholarship along with a thank-you letter from your student recipient(s). If you are interested in contacting a student directly, you may do so if the student's address and telephone number appear on the thank-you letter. If you do not have this information, please contact the Advancement Office, and we will ask the student for permission to give out their contact information.

Is my scholarship gift tax-deductible? California College of the Arts has created a number of giving societies that afford donors benefits in exchange for their gifts. See Donor Benefits.

How are scholarship gifts recognized? In addition to being honored formally at our annual scholarship dinner, California College of the Arts publishes a list of all named scholarships. Endowed scholarships are added permanently to the donor walls on both the San Francisco and Oakland campuses. We also print a current list of scholarship gifts in our annual honor roll of donors, which appears in the spring issue of Glance, the magazine for the CCA community.

Thank You

We very much appreciate your consideration and interest in creating an endowed or annual scholarship at California College of the Arts. Your generosity will be of great assistance to current and future generations of students.

Should you have any questions or need additional information, please contact the Advancement Office at 510.594.3784 or giving@cca.edu.