Submitted Photo Rugby area residents filled the Rugby Eagles Club for the Dollars for Scholars Beach Gala on March 29.

For more than 20 years, the Rugby Dollars for Scholars chapter has supported local graduates in affording and achieving their dreams in higher education.

According to the Dollars For Scholars Rugby Chapter website, the chapter has awarded 423 scholarships totalling $216,500 since its founding on June 28, 2002. The chapter joined the national Scholarship America program in 2003, which board and awards committee member Christie Jaeger said broadens the scope of the options available to Rugby graduates. The Rugby chapter also offers secondary scholarships to former Rugby students who previously were awarded a scholarship.

“There is an online application they fill out for the scholarships using one form. Of course, it’s detailed, as far as the students still put in quite a bit of time, work and effort into it,” Jaeger said. The application requires them to enter all their activities, grades and their involvement over the course of their high school careers.

By completing the application, students not only can become eligible for the chapter’s scholarships, 15 named business or memorial scholarships, but also to statewide and national scholarships that use the platform. Jaeger said the platform enhances the opportunities for students and is even available to students from a community that doesn’t have a Dollars for Scholars chapter.

“Every year we always have a handful of students that have qualified for some state or national scholarship that would not have been able to if they didn’t have this platform to apply through,” Jaeger said. “It’s been a way for people who have been interested in having a scholarship, whether it’s been for a business or in memory of someone. It’s not an easy process to get a form out there and you try to sort through who you think should get it. That’s why it’s been so good, because we can tailor it and all the different options so they can award it to the student they’re looking for.”

Jaeger said the platform allows the organization to fine-tune the criteria and requirements for each scholarship and include questions or essay responses from the students applying. Once applications have closed and the platform matches each student with the scholarships that fit best, they are anonymously reviewed and awarded by the awards committee. Jaeger said this system helps the board know it is awarding the scholarship to a student who meets the criteria and avoids being conflicted by knowing who they’re awarding it to.

“As a local, smaller town, it gives us that anonymity of the students when we’re awarding them. I think that can be a worry and concern in a smaller community – how everybody knows everybody – but we as a board aren’t hand picking them,” Jaeger said. “We don’t know who the students are when we see their numbers. The computer ranks them. You might have one scholarship that weighs their work experience higher. You have another that ranks their activities or volunteerism higher. Even when the kids answer a question, they’re just assigned a number, and certain people will go in and score them without knowing who the student is.”

Jaeger said the Rugby chapter’s goal is to award $15,000-20,000 in scholarships from funds raised through events such as its annual gala, calendar raffles and 50/50 raffles to ensure every Rugby High School graduate receives at least a $500 scholarship. In some years, high achieving students have been awarded larger amounts.

Jaeger said the chapter is taking steps to secure the long term future of the organization through the creation of an endowment fund, which is expected to be finalized in the near future. Jaeger said the hope is that the endowment will make it possible to award a student the tuition equivalent to the cost of a school like Bismarck State College.

“That’s our big goal,” Jaeger said. “We’re all pretty passionate about it.”