Student debt and rising tuition prices have been a hot button issue for years and will only continue to be. According to NerdWallet, in 2016 the average American student graduating with a four-year degree did so with $28,446 in debt. A small hardware store cannot stop this landslide alone, but by providing a scholarship or grant it can assist in a brighter future for a deserving student. This would boost the hardware store’s public image and increase its community engagement.
Visibility should hardly be an issue for a college scholarship. Students and their parents are constantly seeking them out. Promotion could be as simple as getting in contact with local high schools and notifying them of the scholarship opportunity, allowing the schools to do the rest. The store could also print out a poster or even a small handout to display where it may be easily seen. Posting on social media is also a free option.
Implementation is simple. The hardware store makes $150,000 a year; assuming that this figure is after wages, there are plenty of funds to invest in a scholarship. A single one to two thousand dollar scholarship could suffice, but depending on how generous the owner may be feeling, it could be five separate $1,000 scholarships.
127 our experts are availableright now
The hardware store must then decide how to determine the scholarship winner. It could simply be a scholarship based on academic merit and an essay, or the scholarship could be needs-based in order to target lesser privileged applicants. The hardware store owner could appoint a winner his/herself or ask each school to determine a winner through a sort of committee. After deciding on a winner, the hardware store would simply write a check to the selected applicant.
As a small local hardware store, the company’s most relevant stakeholders are most probably its customers and fellow community members. Community members could also include fellow businessowners. Since the hardware store is already involved in the community, perhaps the owner could persuade other local businessowners to also partake in the scholarship effort, providing some of their own.
The hardware store could improve its own image by rightfully claiming responsibility for this wave of support for local high school students and also help provide more scholarship opportunities. Assuming some of the store’s customers know or are parents high schoolers, the hardware store could engage them in the effort by simply asking them to spread the word about the scholarship, or even enable them to make donations to the scholarship fund when they check out. Having engaged with the community prior to this CSR project, it is likely the hardware store will receive community support in execution.
