Scholarships for Students From Berks County Community Foundation

Be aware that the foundation publishes two different application windows. The scholarship information page says the universal application opens each year on December 1st and closes February 1st at 11:59 PM EST, with late applications not accepted. The foundation's contact page says the application is open every year from January 1 to March 1. Because the two pages disagree, confirm the dates with the foundation before you plan around either one.

Each scholarship has its own eligibility requirements, and the form matches you based on the answers you give. The page does not list those rules or say how much the awards are worth. Employees, board members and committee members of Berks County Community Foundation are not eligible to apply or be nominated, and neither are their immediate family members; immediate family may still be nominated and recognized as a recipient, but without the money.

You apply through the online scholarship portal at grantinterface.com. First time applicants click "Create New Account" to register and set up a login. Use a personal email address rather than your school email, since award emails may arrive after you graduate and lose access to a high school account.

After you submit the universal application, you are sent to your dashboard, where you will see the scholarships you matched with. Some of them have follow-up questions or requests that must be completed for you to be considered. You can answer them right away or log back in later, but an application with unfinished follow-up questions counts as incomplete, and you must submit the application after completing those questions by the deadline. Matching with several scholarships does not mean you will receive them all.

Emails from the system come from administrator@grantinterface.com. If you are expecting messages and not getting them, check your spam folder and add that address to your contacts.

Most universal application scholarship decisions are announced no later than April. Every student gets an email notification, so check your junk and spam folder. Only one email is sent no matter how many scholarships you were granted, and you can check your dashboard for the full list. If you are awarded a scholarship, log into your dashboard and complete the scholarship acceptance form no later than June 15th; missing that deadline forfeits the scholarship. Only one acceptance form is needed no matter how many awards you received. The foundation also holds a scholarship luncheon for recipients and asks them to RSVP; the most recent one listed was held May 20, 2026, and the page does not give a date for a future luncheon.

Payments are issued in three batches, on June 15th, July 1st and July 15th, and are sent directly to the college or university listed on your acceptance form. Schools usually take several weeks to receive and process them, so contact your school to confirm receipt. Payments are cancelled if the acceptance form is not submitted on time, if eligibility cannot be verified, or, for multi-year awards, if required follow-up documentation is not received by June 15th. Payments may also be cancelled when a student's status changes, such as no longer attending school, and the student cannot be reached.

If you receive a scholarship from the foundation, you may also qualify for the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency match program, Partnerships for Access to Higher Education (PATH). To be considered you must have received a foundation scholarship for the academic year, demonstrate financial need, and be enrolled as an undergraduate at least half time at a PA State Grant approved postsecondary institution in Pennsylvania while maintaining satisfactory academic progress. Details and the form are on your scholarship acceptance form in the portal.

Families who need help paying tuition at a private or religious school for kindergarten through 12th grade apply separately, through the Educational Improvement Tax Credit/Berks County Scholarship Tax Credit Fund and Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit Fund, which share their own application on the portal with a May 15th to 31st deadline. Those income rules do not apply to the universal scholarship application.

If you believe you met a scholarship's criteria but did not match with it, you can ask for a review by emailing scholarships@bccf.org or calling 610.685.2223, and the request must be made before the February 1st deadline. For any other question, email scholarships@bccf.org or call the foundation's office at 610.685.2223 and ask for Kim Sheffer, Lifelong Learning Program Officer. The office is at 237 Court Street, Reading PA 19601, which is also where thank you notes to donors are mailed; the application itself is completed online. The page does not give office hours.

Source: bccf.org/funds/scholarships, read September 18, 2026.

The details

In Berks County Community Foundation’s words

The universal application is a single form that matches your answers to the scholarship(s) for which you qualify.

All help in Berks County →