Community Scholars Initiative 2024 Grant Program

San Diego Foundation seeks innovative, high-impact funding proposals for the newly re-envisioned Community Scholars Initiative (CSI) 2024 Grant Program that supports students who identify in any of the following student groups:

  • Students with disabilities
  • Foster youth
  • Students experiencing homelessness
  • English language learners

Successful applicants will submit a proposal that outlines the most promising and impactful strategies and programmatic interventions that contribute to increasing college access, persistence and completion among one or more of the priority student populations.

Each partner in the CSI cohort will receive a four-year conditional funding commitment from San Diego Foundation and will be a recipient of annual programmatic funding, annual emergent needs/responsive funding, technical assistance support, networking and capacity building support, and student scholarships.

For questions, please contact Cassie Guerena at cguerena@sdfoundation.org.

Application Deadline

Thursday, April 18, 2024 at 3:00pm PST

Frequently Asked Questions

Please click here to view frequently asked questions about grant program and application.

Office Hours

Sign up for a 20-minute session of office hours hosted by San Diego Foundation staff on the following dates:

  • March 14, 2024, from 1:00pm to 4:00pm PST

Grant Guidelines

Apply Now

The Community Scholars Initiative has resulted in:

$

3

.5M

Invested in college access and success

574

Student scholarships awarded

35000

Students received basic needs support

Increasing Educational Equity

The Community Scholars Initiative (CSI) helps San Diegans prepare for, pay for and persist through college by providing financial support and critical wraparound services that bolster academic achievement to increase equity, build a representative local workforce and create resilient communities.

Since 2017, the initiative has supported 574 first-generation college students from low-income families and underrepresented communities with over $1.6 million in scholarships. CSI has supported community-based partners with over $1.8 million in grants to support vital college readiness programs and over $142,000 for emergency assistance and additional scholarships to CSI students.

In 2023, CSI underwent a program evaluation to understand how the program could pivot to meet the current needs of the region better. The evaluation process concluded that to increase educational equity in the region CSI has an opportunity to narrow our focus on specific student populations facing the greatest barriers to completion:

  • English language learners
  • Students experiencing homelessness
  • Students with disabilities
  • Foster youth

The Community Scholars Initiative helps to:

Impact Stories & Insight