LGBTQ+ Scholarships Program

The aver­age amount of each indi­vid­ual NRCF schol­ar­ship award is $2,500.

The NRCF schol­ar­ship is open to LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als who are high school seniors, incom­ing and cur­rent col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents, cur­rent com­mu­ni­ty col­lege stu­dents, and adult re-entry stu­dents. For the 2025–2026 aca­d­e­m­ic year, schol­ar­ships are avail­able to Cal­i­for­nia res­i­dents only. We aspire to make schol­ar­ships avail­able nation­wide in future years. Appli­cants must demon­strate finan­cial need and plan to enroll in at least 6 units at a Title IV-approved and accred­it­ed pub­lic or non­prof­it com­mu­ni­ty col­lege, four-year uni­ver­si­ty, or trade/vocational school in the U.S.

The NRCF schol­ar­ship can be used to cov­er tuition, books, fees, room and board, and oth­er edu­ca­tion­al expens­es includ­ed in the cam­pus Total Cost of Atten­dance bud­get.

No. It is not nec­es­sary to be pub­licly “out” to apply for the NRCF schol­ar­ship. The appli­ca­tion process is designed to respect and pro­tect your pri­va­cy, regard­less of whether you are pub­licly open about your sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

Appli­cants can demon­strate finan­cial need by com­plet­ing one of the fol­low­ing: Free Appli­ca­tion for Fed­er­al Stu­dent Aid (FAFSA), the Cal­i­for­nia DREAM Act Appli­ca­tion, or the Fed­er­al Stu­dent Aid Esti­ma­tor Tool. Addi­tion­al­ly, you are encour­aged to sub­mit a state­ment of need to explain your finan­cial cir­cum­stances.

Schol­ar­ship appli­ca­tions are assessed by the NRCF Schol­ar­ship Pro­gram Com­mit­tee, which includes NRCF and San Diego Foun­da­tion staff, Board mem­bers, and vol­un­teer eval­u­a­tors. The selec­tion process eval­u­ates appli­cants based on finan­cial need, per­son­al state­ment, spe­cial cir­cum­stances, aca­d­e­m­ic back­ground, and out­side involve­ment.

At this time, no they are one-year awards.

We take your pri­va­cy seri­ous­ly. All infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by appli­cants is con­sid­ered con­fi­den­tial and will not be shared pub­licly with­out per­mis­sion from the appli­cant. Appli­cant names and iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion are masked from review­ers dur­ing this review process. All schol­ar­ship review­ers and inter­view­ers sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment.