The Community Foundation of Washington County MD, Inc. works with families, friends and organizations to create lasting legacies through endowed scholarship funds that can make awards forever. You can create a scholarship to memorialize or honor someone, celebrate your alma mater or promote a chosen career field. The creation of a scholarship fund can affect the donor as much as the recipient.

The Community Foundation of Washington County MD offers more than 100 scholarships for graduating high school students and non-traditional students in continuing education. Each scholarship has its own criteria and deadline, so please check each individual scholarship for specifics. Please contact Sarah Burge, director of grants and donor relations, at (301) 745-5210 for any questions.

To browse scholarships and/or apply, read through our Scholarship List.

Scholarship Best Practices

Applications for Community Foundation scholarships are only accepted online. Although each individual scholarship has specific criteria to meet donor intent, students enter demographic information once, even if applying for several awards. The system is mobile and simple to navigate.  However, many students enter incomplete or inaccurate information, apply for awards for which they do not qualify, or simply fail to complete their applications on time. In an effort to better serve donors by increasing the number and quality of applicants for their awards, as well as students by increasing their understanding of the process, we offer the following best practices for scholarship applications.

1. Do your research. Read the criteria for each scholarship before beginning your application. If you are not planning a career in health care, do not apply for a nursing scholarship. Incomplete or ineligible applications clog up the system and imply the student is applying randomly for awards, and thus lacks attention to detail.
2. Do your own work—the mantra taught by all elementary school teachers. We encourage students to complete the process themselves. It is obvious when a parent has completed the application, which may negatively impact the review process.
3. Check your work. Is your capitalization, punctuation, spelling and grammar correct? U r not communicating via text or with your peers. Present yourself in a professional manner. Leaving out a zip code or the last name of a reference can eliminate your application for consideration.
4. Get your work done. We release scholarship applications months prior to the deadline, yet many students do not begin the applications until the very last minute. Applications are time and date stamped each time the student logs on to the system. Scholarship applications often require input from third parties that may not be available at midnight the night before the due date. Communicate with those from whom you have requested letters of recommendation or transcripts. Requests for extra time will not be granted. To do so would be disrespectful to other students who made scholarship applications a priority.

Good Luck!