Scholarships Program for LGBTQ+ and More

Access the Nation­al Rain­bow Col­lege Fund Appli­ca­tion here. The dead­line to fin­ish the appli­ca­tion is Wednes­day, March 4, 2026, at 2:00 p.m. PST. To learn more about nav­i­gat­ing the appli­ca­tion, access our appli­ca­tion work­shop video record­ing here.

Nation­al Rain­bow Col­lege Fund Appli­ca­tion may take up to 2 hours.

You must have lived in Cal­i­for­nia for at least one full year before you can apply for our schol­ar­ships, and your parent(s) must file fed­er­al income tax returns for the pre­vi­ous year in Cal­i­for­nia. The only excep­tion is for active mem­bers of the mil­i­tary and their depen­dents, who must have lived in Cal­i­for­nia for at least one full year before they can apply for our schol­ar­ships but may file fed­er­al income tax returns for the pre­vi­ous year in anoth­er coun­ty or state.

None of our schol­ar­ships are avail­able to for­eign stu­dents study­ing out­side the Unit­ed States, or for stu­dents attend­ing an insti­tu­tion out­side of the Unit­ed States.

Inter­na­tion­al and Undocumented/CA Dream Act stu­dents can apply for schol­ar­ships that are not exclu­sive to for U.S. cit­i­zens and/or per­ma­nent res­i­dents.

The Nation­al Rain­bow Col­lege Fund schol­ar­ship is need-based and may define finan­cial need dif­fer­ent­ly than your school’s finan­cial aid office. As such, we encour­age you to apply if you have at least some finan­cial need.

Award for each schol­ar­ship is $2,500.

The schol­ar­ship may pay for tuition, room and board, books, fees and/or oth­er relat­ed edu­ca­tion­al expens­es. This will be out­lined in your award noti­fi­ca­tion.

Apply­ing for our schol­ar­ships is com­plete­ly cost-free. please be aware of schol­ar­ship scams. Be cau­tious when deal­ing with orga­ni­za­tions or web­sites that request pay­ment, guar­an­tee schol­ar­ships or con­tact you through unso­licit­ed mail or spam emails. Your edu­ca­tion and future are impor­tant, so stay vig­i­lant!

The 2026–2027 Free Appli­ca­tion for Fed­er­al Stu­dent Aid (FAFSA) will open Octo­ber 1st. On the FAFSA for the 2026–2027 aca­d­e­m­ic year, stu­dents (and par­ents, as appro­pri­ate) will report their 2024 income infor­ma­tion rather than their 2025 income infor­ma­tion. The same change to the Com­mon Schol­ar­ship Application’s guide­line was made in Sep­tem­ber 2018 to coor­di­nate with the FAFSA. If you or your par­ents do not file a fed­er­al income tax return, please esti­mate your Adjust­ed Gross Income (AGI).

We also accept infor­ma­tion from the Cal­i­for­nia Dream Act (CADA) and the Fed­er­al Stu­dent Aid Esti­ma­tor Tool.

We can­not makes changes to your appli­ca­tion after you sub­mit. Please noti­fy our team as soon as pos­si­ble of any finan­cial changes so that we may deter­mine if you remain eli­gi­ble for the schol­ar­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty.

Staff will ini­tial­ly check your appli­ca­tion for basic eli­gi­bil­i­ty. Then, our schol­ar­ship selec­tion com­mit­tees will con­sid­er the infor­ma­tion in your appli­ca­tion, includ­ing your activ­i­ties, aca­d­e­mics, finan­cial need and per­son­al state­ments.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of you receiv­ing a schol­ar­ship depends on sev­er­al fac­tors, includ­ing how many appli­cants are eli­gi­ble for the schol­ar­ship, how many schol­ar­ships will be award­ed for each oppor­tu­ni­ty, and how com­pet­i­tive the oth­er appli­cants are. We strong­ly advise you to take your time when fill­ing out the appli­ca­tion, and don’t for­get to give your short essay prompt answer a thor­ough review. Your effort will make a dif­fer­ence!

We do not con­duct inter­views for this schol­ar­ship oppor­tu­ni­ty.

We noti­fy appli­cants on a rolling basis via email, so be sure to keep an eye out between April-June for any updates. The appli­ca­tion plat­form will also reflect appli­ca­tion updates on your dash­board. If you are declined a schol­ar­ship, you may re-apply the fol­low­ing year if you remain eli­gi­ble. If you are award­ed a schol­ar­ship, we will noti­fy you by June and pro­vide more details on your next steps. Please note that we com­mu­ni­cate pri­mar­i­ly through email, so if you have ANY email address changes, you MUST update us at nrcf@sdfoundation.org.

Schol­ar­ship checks are only paid once we have received your required award agree­ment and all nec­es­sary ver­i­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments. Schol­ar­ship checks are des­ig­nat­ed for the stu­dent and are mailed direct­ly to your school’s finan­cial aid or schol­ar­ships office, which will deposit the check and post it to your stu­dent account. There are no excep­tions to where we send the check. Schol­ar­ships may be divid­ed into divid­ed into two equal pay­ments depend­ing on the amount of the award.

Schol­ar­ship recip­i­ents must sub­mit ver­i­fi­ca­tion of their grades and enroll­ment every fall in the Fall Mate­ri­als forms. The grades you sub­mit should always reflect the grades of the cur­rent semes­ter you are in, the one pri­or to the upcom­ing semes­ter. Some stu­dents may only need to sub­mit Fall Mate­ri­als depend­ing on the val­ue of your award and its dis­burse­ment (sent in one semes­ter or split across mul­ti­ple semes­ters), while oth­ers may need to sub­mit both Fall and Spring. All forms are assigned to your Foun­dant por­tal with rel­e­vant dead­lines. Here is the link to the por­tal, please use the same login from your ini­tial appli­ca­tion: Stu­dent Foun­dant Link

A thank you video is required for this schol­ar­ship. Details will be out­lined in your award let­ter. We will request it from you using a video upload plat­form in late July/early August.

The Nation­al Rain­bow Col­lege Fund Schol­ar­ship does not defer schol­ar­ships from year to year. Please noti­fy us imme­di­ate­ly if you are ful­ly fund­ed for this school year.

Some of our schol­ar­ships are lim­it­ed to spe­cif­ic schools. If you trans­fer schools, please noti­fy us imme­di­ate­ly so we can deter­mine whether you are still eli­gi­ble for your schol­ar­ship. If you are eli­gi­ble, we will trans­fer your award to your new school.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we do not have renew­al schol­ar­ships at this time.

Your schol­ar­ship may be tax-free if you are a stu­dent pur­su­ing a degree at an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion, and the schol­ar­ship pays for tuition, fees, books and sup­plies that are required of all stu­dents in your class­es. For more infor­ma­tion, con­sult a tax expert or your school’s finan­cial aid office.

No, you do not need to pay back your schol­ar­ship unless you use it for pur­pos­es oth­er than those allowed by your schol­ar­ship agree­ment.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we can­not accept late appli­ca­tions, sup­port­ing mate­ri­als, let­ters of rec­om­men­da­tion, or stu­dent aid reports after the 2:00 p.m. PST dead­line on March 4, 2026. Due to the vol­ume of appli­ca­tions we receive and our inter­nal time­line, we will not make excep­tions.

We encour­age stu­dents to apply for every cycle they are eli­gi­ble for while in school to increase their oppor­tu­ni­ties. Please note that the FAFSA/CA Dream Act for the 2026–27 aca­d­e­m­ic year will open on Octo­ber 1st and is required for our CSA appli­ca­tion.

We appre­ci­ate your under­stand­ing and hope to see your appli­ca­tion next year.