Online service to match students with scholarships
Touted as the eHarmony for scholarships, thewashboard.org, an online service set to launch this month will custom match state-based scholarship providers with student-scholarship seekers who either plan to attend college in the state or who are Washington residents planning to go to college elsewhere.
Seattle Times staff reporter
There are scholarship funds across the Puget Sound that some years can't give money away.Others struggle to get enough applications to make the competition worthwhile.
Take Soroptimist International of Seattle Metropolitan, a women's group that each year awards a number of small scholarships to single mothers who want to go back to college or attend for the first time.
Pat Griffith, the organization's award chair, tries to spread word about the modest grants through community colleges and women's centers — but each year is surprised by how few women end up applying.
"We have a hard time giving money away, sometimes," Griffith said.
Soroptimist recently joined a free scholarship clearinghouse — thewashboard.org — that should make it easier for the organization and others like it to reach a wider field of college-bound applicants. Touted as the eHarmony for scholarships, the online service is set to launch early in January, just as students begin what at times can be a frantic search for money to pay