One person, 200 scholars: inside the Long Beach Rotary Scholarship Foundation

The Long Beach Rotary Scholarship Foundation is a 501(c)(3) affiliated with the Rotary Club of Long Beach, and its mission is focused: fund scholarships for students at Long Beach City College and Cal State Long Beach. With about $23 million in assets, the foundation supports more than 200 scholars a year and adds 20 to 30 new scholars at each institution annually. Nearly every piece of that work crosses a single desk. Letty Totah has been the foundation’s only staff member for 13 years.

From paper rubrics to one platform

For years, the process ran entirely on paper. Students applied through their high school counselors, counselors ranked the applications, and the board made selections around a table. Scores were tallied by hand on paper rubrics, then keyed into spreadsheets and mailed out.

A web form eventually trimmed some of the manual entry. But the foundation kept growing. Today it manages nine individually named scholarships, each with its own questions, its own interview process, and in some cases its own review committee. A single form had no way to carry that.

Long Beach City College, which uses AwardSpring itself, recommended the platform. Two things sold Letty: it was built specifically for scholarship work, and the reviewer tools could carry her committees. She made the move in 2022.

The reviewers are the headline

Ask Letty about the biggest change and she points to her review committees first. Her volunteers range in age from 50 to 80, and they now score every application online.

“99% of them can log on with my instructions.”

Letty Totah, Executive Director, Long Beach Rotary Scholarship Foundation

When a committee finishes scoring a batch, Letty gets a notification and moves straight to the next step, with no follow-up calls to make. The hand-tallied rubrics, the illegible entries, and the transcription errors are gone. And students apply through a modern online application that works the way they expect an application to work.

The next chapter: donors

The foundation’s donors are its community. Around 300 Rotary Club members give, most of them moved by the student presentations at monthly club meetings. For years, Letty tracked donors in an Excel spreadsheet, and every donor system she evaluated was built for fundraising operations far larger than hers.

This year she added AwardSpring Donor Management, which runs on the same platform as her scholarship work and fits the way her foundation actually operates: donor records, gift history, and board reporting in one place, connected to the scholarships those gifts fund. She is looking forward to bringing donors closer to the students their generosity supports, from thank-you letters to the stories behind each award.

Thirteen years in, and a growing team

The foundation runs on relationships, and Letty’s time goes further when the platform carries the process. After thirteen years as the foundation’s only staff member, she has recently been joined by three former students who assist with social media. Her verdict after five years on the platform:

“We’re happy, let’s keep going.”

Letty Totah, Executive Director, Long Beach Rotary Scholarship Foundation

And when she needs help, she gets it fast, whether she reaches for chat or opens a ticket.