The great news: Kinder HSPVA is free to attend. Here’s the challenge: the arts are highly individualized and expensive.
We know that students with different circumstances need different resources to achieve their goals. Arts-related expenses add up quickly and can be difficult for individual families to bear. To that end, HSPVA Friends provides scholarships and financial aid for:
- art supplies,
- private lessons,
- summer programs,
- field trips,
- access to college auditions, and
- travel to conferences and competitions.
The early investment pays off: when students can access these special opportunities, their college scholarship offers are likely to increase exponentially!
There are many ways to provide opportunities for Kinder HSPVA students:
Immediate Emergency Scholarships
Gifts of any size may be designated to HSPVA Friends’ Priority Scholarship Fund, which provides urgent support for individual students. Kinder HSPVA teachers sometimes learn of students who need immediate assistance to access a musical instrument, private lessons, a college application, or travel to a college audition. In those cases, HSPVA Friends helps quickly and quietly. HSPVA Friends trusts the school’s administration, counselors, and art area faculty implicitly, and, especially in emergency cases, students may receive help while remaining anonymous to HSPVA Friends.
The Priority Scholarship Fund is comprised of many donors’ thoughtful tribute gifts. The sum is greater than its parts. When you give, you join a group of superheroes with the power to change the trajectory of students’ lives.
Named Scholarships
A named scholarship is an opportunity to declare your personal investment in Kinder HSPVA student successes. It can also be used to recognize a loved one, teacher, or business.
Named scholarships may be created to benefit students in one or more of these programs: Band, Creative Writing, Dance, Instrumental Music, Jazz, Mariachi, Orchestra, Piano, Theatre, Visual Arts, and Vocal Music.
Current-Use Scholarships
Named current-use scholarships begin at a minimum of $5,000 for one year or $2,500 for two consecutive years. Current-use scholarships allow you to make an immediate difference, and HSPVA Friends will have full administrative control over the timing and amounts of distributions. Typically, every effort is made to award your entire gift within one year, although HSPVA Friends may choose to award larger current-use scholarship gifts over up to five years, depending on the scholarship’s restrictions and the levels of student need. Current-use scholarship funds will be separately accounted for by HSPVA Friends at a threshold of $25,000.
Endowed Scholarships
To create an endowed scholarship fund, HSPVA Friends recommends that initial gifts or pledges be $50,000 or more, with the intent to build the fund up over time. It is the policy of HSPVA Friends that endowment funds begin at no less than $25,000. Learn more about the HSPVA Friends endowment.
Scholarships FAQs
Because it is the mission of HSPVA Friends to support current and future Kinder HSPVA students, HSPVA Friends does not accept donations restricted to college scholarships. If college scholarships are your passion, we recommend supporting the following HSPVA alumni-run organizations:
- HSPVA Black Alumni Network – HSPVA Black Alumni Network is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose purpose is to connect Black alumni of the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, engage alumni, support current student and alumni endeavors, provide resources and scholarships, and sponsor networking opportunities to champion the next generation of HSPVA artists and professionals.
- DocFest, Inc. – DocFest, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission to support higher education for HSPVA alumni. DocFest was conceived in 2013 by HSPVA alumni Chris Walker (Instrumental ‘86) and Ashley Tamar Davis (Vocal ‘98) to honor the career of Robert “Doc” Morgan, HSPVA Director of Jazz Studies (1976-1999) and Music Department Chair (1978-1992).
Selection committees for each HSPVA Friends scholarship are created at the discretion of the Kinder HSPVA counselors and art area faculty chairs. The HSPVA Friends staff does NOT select scholarship winners.
Information about named scholarships is distributed to students on a rolling basis. Named scholarships use an HSPVA Friends general application form, which asks for the applicant’s contact information, GPA, resume, and description of what they hope to achieve with the scholarship. There is also space for applicants to add any additional information they would like to share with the scholarship committee. Because the scholarship committees have a thorough knowledge of the applicants’ needs as well as the quality of the programs for which they are applying, HSPVA Friends does not recommend that donors require supplementary materials such as essays or teacher recommendations.
HSPVA Friends does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, gender expression, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or any other restricting classification in the distribution of scholarship funds.
For most HSPVA Friends scholarships, the scholarship committee chooses the winner and the donors do not participate in the selection. If the donor of a named scholarship wants to participate in the selection of the winner, they may submit their input to the scholarship committee.
HSPVA Friends requires all winners of named scholarships to submit a thank-you letter, which HSPVA Friends will provide to the donor. Scholarship donors may not contact the applicants or winners of their scholarship directly.
HSPVA Friends prefers to make any scholarship payment directly to the winner’s program. In some cases, HSPVA Friends will provide the funding as a reimbursement to the winner’s parent or guardian.
For more information about scholarships, please contact Alene Coggin, Executive Director, at acoggin@hspvafriends.org.