Various women’s colleges offer merit and need based scholarships and grants including Spelman College, and Agnes Scott College in Georgia. Wellesley College in Massachusetts and Barnard College in New York both also award need-based grants.
Many grants are available to women who are going into fields women have not traditionally chosen. Grants are plentiful for women choosing to go into math, science, engineering, technology, law, business and medicine. Sources for these grants are professional associations, and organizations interested in helping women.
One of the available resources is the National Science Foundation. They provide many awards specifically designed to increase the number of women in their specialty.
Another excellent source is the American Association of University Women (AAUW) which, according to their website, has a mission of advancing equity for women and girls through education, philanthropy, and research. They are currently providing more than three million dollars in funds for over 200 fellowships.
If you are a single mother who would like to become empowered through education, there are many grants available specifically for you.
One of the many organizations that provide these types of grants is Raise the Nation. Their website says their only mission is to help single mothers achieve independence through education. They offer a student loan repayment grant in exchange for the offer of professional services for approximately eight hours a month. They also offer a scholarship for single mothers who would like to continue their education. They even have a scholarship available for young mothers under the age of 24 who are still claimed on their parents’ tax returns, but are in school.
There are many organizations with the mission of contributing to breaking the cycle of poverty that many women find themselves locked in.
One such organization is The Jeannette Rankin Foundation (also known as The Jeannette Rankin Scholarship Fund) which offers scholarships to low income women 35 and older who are in an undergraduate educational institution or a vocational training program. They have awarded 1.3 million dollars to over 600 women since 1978
According to Grants.gov, there are many grants available, usually to organizations that benefit women.
One grant available is the Women’s Business Center Initial Grant, which is offered through the Small Business Administration (SBA) to women in the State of New Jersey to start an organization to help women provide technical assistance to women entrepreneurs.