Scholarship Application Guide

https://dlafoundation.awardspring.com/

10 February 2025

Dear Applicant, 

This guide has been prepared to help you to: 

1. Be aware of several new and important changes to the eligibility criteria
2. Avoid common mistakes or omissions 

Changes made for the 2025-2026 Academic Year Application Period 

• Added note that family members of contractors or co-located non-DLA activities are not eligible for scholarships, unless those individuals were previously employed or assigned to DLA.
• Added a note that applications are only accepted for Undergraduate studies.
• Revised note in the event you were accepted by multiple schools but there is a delay in any of their financial offers to you.
• Added note to include applicant’s and family member’s cell phone numbers to allow for notification by text message if you are selected for a scholarship. 

Applicant Must:

• Be a U.S. Citizen.
• Have a minimum of a 3.0 Cumulative GPA.
• If already enrolled in college, have their transcripts reflect they are a full-time student with at least 12 semester credit hours or equivalent quarter hours.
• Have a maximum Student Aid Index (SAI) number of 15000 in the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Student Aid Report.
• Provide documentation of the close family member’s employment or assignment to DLA (see below for details). Family members of contractors for DLA or co-located civilians or Service members not actually employed or assigned to DLA are not eligible, unless those individuals were previously employed or assigned to DLA.
• Applications are only accepted for Undergraduate studies 

Accessing the Application 

Please go to the AwardSpring Application Tool at  https://dlafoundation.awardspring.com/

Accounts must be established in the Student’s Name

The applicant must be the actual student, NOT a parent, friend, or relative. If you have submitted an application in prior years under an account that is not in your, the student’s, name, then DO NOT use that account; YOU MUST establish a new account in your name. The name in the account information must match the name in submitted transcripts, SAT or ACT scores, and FAFSA information.  If the names do not match, the application will be disqualified and not considered for a scholarship.  

When establishing your account, please use a personal email address; do not use a government email address ending in “.dla.mil”, “.mil”, or “.gov”.

IMPORTANT:   Do NOT use a school assigned email address.  Especially if you are a high school senior using a school email address.  Since we may need to contact you AFTER the end of the school year, such accounts may no longer be valid at that time.  Provide an email address that you are frequently monitoring.

DLA Family Member – while the DLA Foundation supports families of current and former employees or military assigned to DLA we are a separate non-profit organization and we are NOT part of DLA.  Therefore, because of limitations on what government organizations can do to assist outside organizations, and because of security and privacy concerns, we cannot ask DLA to verify the employment of current or former employees or military members assigned to DLA.  Because of this we ask for the following documentation: 

For Current or Former Civilian Employees:

SF-50 Notice of Personnel Action – this could reflect a recent assignment or promotion, etc.  For retired employees the final SF-50 will reflect their retirement. Of course, the SF-50 must reflect assignment to a DLA activity.

If for some reason they cannot find an appropriate SF-50, then an SF-52 Request for Personnel Action is also acceptable.

If neither an SF-50 or SF-52 is available then documentation such as a Performance Award, Certificate of Achievement, Training Certificate, or mention in a DLA publication or article on a DLA web page may also be acceptable, subject to review by the Scholarship Committee.

For Current or Former Military members assigned to DLA: 

A copy of Permanent Change of Station (PCS) or Deployment Orders.  If these are not available, please submit other information such as a military award for service while serving with DLA, or mention in a DLA publication or article on a DLA web page. 

For all Family Member employment verification documentation 

******For your protection PLEASE cover or otherwise eliminate any Social Security Number information before scanning or taking pictures of such documents.****** 

***The family member may also redact their salary info if they desire***

Please ask your parent, grandparent, aunt or uncle for this documentation as soon as possible, even before you start your application. Such documents must be submitted with your application before the application deadline.

When listing your family member’s email address, please use their personal email account, not their DLA email account. DLA accounts should only be used for the official business of the Agency. As noted above, the Foundation is not a part of DLA and as such, scholarship communication and correspondence is not official DLA business.

DLA Organization of the family member:

Please select the organization from the drop down list that best reflects the organization for which your family member works/worked. For family members that may have retired more than several years ago, please coordinate with them. DLA activities have undergone numerous reorganizations, consolidations, and name changes over the years. If the actual organization for which your retired family member was assigned is not listed, ask them to identify the most likely successor organization.  Please list the current or last DLA organization in which the family member is/was employed, not the one to which they were initially assigned.

Family Member’s Employment Geographical Organization

Since some employees may work for an organization whose headquarters are located in a city other than which they are geographically assigned, please enter the city or metropolitan area in which your family member works/worked.

Address and phone number for the financial assistance office 

We need the information for the office to which any external scholarships for the school to which you will be attending will be mailed.  This is usually not the generic address of the school.  Contact the school or research their web site for the office that handles this.  It may be under an office or department such as “Office of the Bursar”, “Office of Financial Aid”, Office of the Comptroller” or “Cashier’s Office.”  Failure to provide the correct address will delay the receipt and processing of the scholarship check.

Student ID#

This is the student ID of the institution to which you will be attending.  It is not your high school ID.  If it is not in the acceptance letter from the school which you will be attending for the 2023-2024 Academic Year, contact them to obtain this number.   If you will be attending the same school for the 2023-2024 Academic Year in which you are currently enrolled then there should be no confusion.  However, if you intend to transfer to another school in the 2023-2024 Academic Year then you must provide the Student ID at your new school. 

Transcripts 

Please submit your transcript as a PDF file with all pages. Screen prints are discouraged since they seldom reflect all information. Sometimes the screens will not even reflect the name of the school.  You must ensure that the school’s name AND student’s name appear on the transcript. 

You must ensure that your Cumulative GPA is reflected on the transcript since our eligibility criteria are based on the cumulative GPA and not just a specific semester or quarter. For students already enrolled in college, semester and/or quarter information must also be included and reflect a course workload of at least 12 semester hours (or quarter equivalents).

Official transcripts are not required.  However, a PDF of an unofficial transcript is preferred over other formats as it will ensure that it contains all necessary information.

SAT or ACT scores 

SAT or ACT scores are not required and will not be accepted or evaluated.

Acceptance Letters or Next Semester Schedule 

We have set the application deadline to April 1^st or later since some colleges or universities do not issue their acceptance letters until April 1^st.  If you are fortunate and have been accepted by multiple schools, you must select one and include that institution’s letter in your application.

In the event that the schools to which you have been accepted are delayed in providing you a financial package you may not definitively know which school you will select to attend before this Scholarship Application Deadline.   Therefore, these are the procedures we have put into place:

• Select any one of the schools that have accepted you and input that school’s information and acceptance letter into the application.
• If you are selected for a scholarship, before we issue the scholarship checks we will check with you so that you may either confirm you will be attending the school reflected in your application, or
• You will provide us with the new school name, address of the financial office to which the checks shall be issued, and a copy of that school’s acceptance letter.
• If you are already attending college but will be changing schools due to a more beneficial financial aid package, the same information will be required.
• Make sure that your email or contacts lists include “awardspring.com” and “[email protected]” to avoid such emails going to your SPAM folder.
• Make sure your and your family member’s cell phone numbers are entered into the phone number fields since we will also be texting applicants the are successful recipients for a scholarship.
• A response is required within 10 business days. If you do not respond this will delay issuance of your scholarship check and you may possibly forfeit the scholarship. 

FAFSA Submission Summary (FSS) & Student Aid Index (SAI) 

The PDF file of a completed FSS which reflects the Students Name on Page 1 and the Student Aid Index (SAI) on page 1or 2 must be submitted with your application. If you have not already applied, please do so as so as possible to ensure you receive your SAR before the DLA Scholarship application deadline. A pending or preliminary or 2S is not acceptable.

Screen prints are highly discouraged since the screen may not contain all the data or may be of an inferior resolution.

The Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) Submission Summary (FSS) must be for the current academic period and not for a prior period(s).

The MyStudentData download of a Student Aid Report CSV (Comma Separated Values) file (similar to a spreadsheet) in lieu of a PDF of the SAR is NOT acceptable.

Notable Achievements and Personal Essay 

While there may be some overlap in what you document in your Notable Achievements and what you include in your essay, such overlap should be limited.  In no case will a copy of the same document be acceptable for both. Neither should one be a simple rewording or reorganization of the other. If an evaluator reading these documents sees that little or no effort was made to differentiate them you run the risk of receiving little or no credit for one or both.

Publicly Posted Information

Students who are awarded scholarships will have their information (Name, Hometown, affiliated DLA organization) posted on the DLA Foundation’s and Defense Logistics Agency’s web sites.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please submit them to the following email address:

[email protected]

As we are all volunteers, please allow up to several days for a response.