WFOA Scholarships

Welcome to the WFOA Scholarships Page

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This is the page to get information about WFOA’s scholarship program for WFOA conferences, WFOA non-conference training and (very limited) GFOA conferences. If you’re looking for the college internship program, including scholarships to help with schooling to qualify you to get a job in government finance, check here.

Who is eligible for WFOA scholarships? WFOA members whose organizations support their requests can get a scholarship up to two years in a row.  Typically, we don’t approve more than two scholarship requests per entity per year.

What if I want to go to the WFOA conference but I always renew my membership when I sign up for the conference? That doesn’t really work if you want a scholarship.  You need to be a member before your scholarship will be approved.

What types of costs are paid? We’ll typically pay up to the early bird registration price for our annual conference or non-conference training event. We can also help with hotel costs, up to the lesser of your actual costs or $85 per night (for annual conference, we’ll approve up to two nights, for non-conference training, up to one night).  Our first priority is registration costs.

What about GFOA conference? We encourage first time GFOA attendees to check out GFOA’s scholarship program.  We typically budget two scholarships to the GFOA conference, usually $750 each.  These are limited to one per person every other year, one scholarship per entity.

What about other fabulous financial training? Our priority are the WFOA offerings.  Requests for scholarships to other trainings are typically declined.

What do I need to do to get the scholarship?

  • You will need to be an active member.
  • You will need a letter of support, on entity letterhead, from your organization before a scholarship will be awarded.  It can be from the chief elected (for example, Mayor) or appointed official (such as Fire Chief); in a larger organization, the leader of the finance department can write it.
  • You will need to fill out the WFOA scholarship application
  • You will need to pay for everything in advance with the understanding you will be reimbursed
  • You will need to check into the sessions so you can provide evidence of attendance
  • You will need receipts of lodging costs

Scholarship payments are reimbursements to recipients (typically to their entities) after they attend the event and provide evidence of attendance, and, if lodging costs are awarded, receipts of lodging costs. For WFOA conference, if the attendees use their badge to sign in at meals and class/CPE tap-n-go kiosks, we can retrieve that information.  For non-conference classes, a scanned copy of the certificate works great.  So, if you don’t go to the event, you don’t get the scholarship.

GFOA Conference Scholarship

Did you know that WFOA has 2 GFOA Conference Scholarships available every year?  WFOA will reimburse the cost of the Early Bird Registration plus some hotel costs for a total up to $750.00.

Applications for the for the GFOA Conference Scholarships are due no later than the last working day of February.  We will be scoring the applications received based the following criteria; 1) if your entity have received a GFOA Conference Scholarship in the past two years; 2) if you have received a GFOA Conference Scholarship in the past four years; 3) the population your entity serves; 4) the number of WFOA Scholarships your entity has received in the past four years.  Sitting WFOA Board Members are NOT eligible for a GFOA Conference Scholarship.  The top two scoring individuals will be awarded the GFOA Conference Scholarships.  Scholarship payments are reimbursements to recipients (typically to their entities) after they attend the event and provide evidence of attendance, and, if lodging costs are awarded, receipts of lodging costs.

Ready to get started? Fill out the application here.

If you have questions please contact the current Member Communications & Scholarship Chair