Education Opportunity Funds, end to end.

An Education Opportunity Fund (EOF) is a donor-advised scholarship fund sponsored by Yeshiva Giving Fund, a 501(c)(3) public charity. You set up the fund as its single donor, contribute to it (in one gift or over time), and recommend students to receive scholarship awards. YGF independently reviews and approves each recommendation, then pays the scholarship directly to the student by ACH — keeping the fund compliant with IRS scholarship rules.

In plain terms: it’s a way to build a personal scholarship program without forming your own nonprofit, applying for 501(c)(3) status, or managing receipting and compliance yourself.

EOFs work well for:

• Individual donors who want their charitable scholarship giving consolidated in one well-administered fund, with the flexibility to support different students each year.
• Families memorializing a relative with an ongoing scholarship — one family member is the formal donor and recommender.
• Yeshivas, schools, and educational institutions formalizing an aid fund — the institution itself acts as the donor.
• Major donors looking for a lower-cost alternative to running a private foundation or a traditional donor-advised fund.
• Communities running rabbinic, vocational, or special-needs scholarship programs that need a fiscal sponsor.

If you need to raise scholarship money from many donors at once, an EOF is the wrong tool — that’s what a Community Support Fund is for. EOFs are single-donor vehicles by design.

The biggest structural difference is who gives — and what the program is for:

• EOF — one donor, scholarships only. You set up the fund as its donor, fund it yourself, and recommend students. YGF reviews each recommendation and pays the scholarship directly to the student by ACH. Designed for endowment-style giving that compounds over years.
• Community Support Fund (CSF) — many donors, any charitable cause that isn’t a scholarship. Public donation page you share with your community — relief efforts, family emergencies, religious programs, capital needs. Sponsored by Rekonect (a separate 501(c)(3)).
• Social Impact Campaign (SIC) — many donors, time-bound. Same idea as a CSF but with a deadline, a goal, a countdown, and donation-matching mechanics. Best for capital projects, emergency response, and milestone campaigns. Also sponsored by Rekonect.

EOFs run on a notably lighter fee structure than CSFs and SICs — free ACH, lower platform tiers — because YGF specializes in scholarship sponsorship and the single-donor structure keeps administrative work low.

Yeshiva Giving Fund (YGF) is a 501(c)(3) public charity that specializes in administering donor-advised scholarship funds. They act as the legal fiscal sponsor for every EOF — meaning donations go to YGF, YGF issues tax receipts, and YGF holds the final authority to award scholarships from your fund balance.

This structure is what makes the donations deductible without you needing your own nonprofit, and what keeps the fund compliant with the IRS rules that govern scholarship programs.

You can recommend family members for scholarships from your EOF, but not exclusively. YGF policy requires that at least 15% of scholarships awarded each calendar year go to recipients unrelated to the donor. This isn’t a BrightLeaf rule — it’s the line that keeps the fund a legitimate charitable scholarship program rather than a private benefit arrangement.

In practice, most EOFs comfortably exceed 15% to non-family recipients. The Section 5 questions below cover what happens if you don’t.

The application lives on our Education Opportunity Fund service page. It’s a single form covering your fund’s purpose, the charitable class you’d like to serve, your identity verification for YGF’s records, and a short call to walk through the approval together.

Start your EOF application →

The application asks for:

• Fund name and purpose — what you’re setting up and the kind of student you want to support.
• Charitable class — which broad category your scholarships will serve (post-high-school yeshiva learners, undergraduate/graduate students, vocational students, rabbinic training, special-needs education, and several others).
• Scholarship selection criteria — financial need, academic merit, community service, or field of study. You can combine these.
• Initial contribution and scholarship-disbursement estimates — directional, not binding.
• Your identity — name, email, phone, citizenship, SSN, and primary address. YGF needs this for fiscal-sponsor recordkeeping.
• How you heard about us and who referred you — referrals matter because they directly reduce your platform fee.
• An onboarding call — a short Google Meet to walk through the application, answer questions, and confirm setup.

Typically 1–2 business days after your onboarding call. YGF reviews each new EOF for fit with their fiscal-sponsorship policies before activating donations. Once approved, your donation page goes live, your dashboard fills in, and you can start raising and recommending grants immediately.

A charitable class is the IRS term for the group of people your scholarships are intended to benefit. It has to be broad enough to qualify as a public charitable purpose — for example, “post-high-school yeshiva students,” not “my nephew Aaron.”

YGF needs a defined charitable class on every EOF before scholarships can be recommended. You select yours during application from a list that includes:

• Post-high-school years of learning
• Yeshiva and Kollel learners
• Rabbinic, Hora’ah, and Chinuch training
• Undergraduate students
• Graduate and professional students
• Vocational and trade students
• Special needs education
• Continuing and adult education
• Torah scholarship and writing

You can update your charitable class later if your fund’s purpose evolves.

Once approved, three things happen:

1. Your donation page goes live at a private URL where you make your contributions.
2. Your dashboard fills in with your fund’s balance, activity, and the tools to recommend scholarships, update your fund info, and message us.
3. You can immediately fund the EOF with your first contribution and recommend your first scholarships — or schedule funding for whenever fits your giving plan.

Each EOF has one donor: you, the program owner. You contribute to your EOF directly through your donation page, in one gift or in multiple contributions over time. Every contribution is a charitable gift to Yeshiva Giving Fund earmarked for your EOF’s balance, so each one is tax-deductible and you receive a receipt from YGF immediately.

The “one donor” architecture is intentional. It’s what keeps an EOF a true donor-advised scholarship fund (rather than a public fundraiser), what allows the lighter fee schedule, and what keeps administrative work simple enough to run for years without ongoing effort.

EOFs accept two methods, both designed for the kind of larger, less-frequent giving that scholarship endowments tend to attract:

• ACH (bank transfer) — processed free of charge. The recommended method for almost every contribution.
• DAFPay — direct from your Donor-Advised Fund through Chariot or a similar processor. 3% processing fee, charged by the DAF infrastructure.

EOFs don’t accept credit/debit cards, digital wallets, Zelle, PayPal, wires, or paper checks. Those payment methods are available on Community Support Funds and Social Impact Campaigns, where many donors are contributing smaller gifts and convenience matters more. EOFs are optimized for endowment-style giving where lower fees and cleaner records matter more than payment flexibility.

If a gift somehow arrives outside the donation page (an off-system wire, a Zelle, a mailed check), it carries an 8% surcharge to cover the manual reconciliation and YGF receipting. Always use the donation page.

Yes. Yeshiva Giving Fund is a recognized 501(c)(3) public charity, and every contribution you make to your EOF gets an immediate tax receipt from YGF for the full amount you paid. Fees are what YGF spends to receive and process the gift; they don’t reduce your deductible amount.

Yes — and it’s a common way to fund EOFs, especially for donors who already use a DAF for their charitable giving. The donation page integrates with DAFPay, which connects to most major DAF providers (Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, Vanguard Charitable, the Jewish Communal Fund, and many smaller sponsors). You sign into your DAF, recommend a grant to YGF earmarked for your EOF, and the funds transfer.

DAF gifts carry a 3% processing fee — the only per-gift processing fee on EOFs. For larger contributions this is usually still the right path because the tax-deductibility was already settled when you originally funded your DAF.

Because an EOF isn’t a fundraiser — it’s a donor-advised scholarship fund with one donor. That structure is what makes the lighter fee schedule possible and what keeps the fund compliant with IRS donor-advised fund rules.

If you want to raise scholarship money from many donors at once, the right structure is different: a Community Support Fund for ongoing fundraising, or a Social Impact Campaign for a time-bound campaign with a goal and a deadline. Both accept cards, digital wallets, Zelle, PayPal, ACH, and DAF — designed for the multi-donor case.

No — each EOF has a single donor. If multiple family members want to support a shared scholarship vision, you have two practical options:

• Pool privately first, then contribute. Other family members give to you directly (outside the EOF and outside the platform — those aren’t deductible gifts), and you then contribute the pooled amount to your EOF. The full contribution becomes deductible on your tax return.
• Each family member sets up their own EOF. If everyone wants their own tax deduction on their own contribution, each donor opens an EOF. With the referral discount, multiple family EOFs end up at a lower combined fee schedule than one large one.

For broader community fundraising where many people want to contribute and receive their own receipts, a CSF or SIC is the right structure.

Either works. Many EOFs are funded with a single major contribution and then drawn down over years of scholarship recommendations. Others are funded incrementally — quarterly, annually, or whenever the donor wants to add to the balance. There’s no minimum contribution, no maximum, and no schedule you have to commit to.

EOFs don’t support automatic recurring payments — each contribution is initiated by you when you want to give. There’s no autopay because there’s only one donor, and donors prefer to time their contributions to their tax planning and giving strategy rather than have them debit on a schedule.

EOFs run on a notably lighter fee structure than most scholarship sponsors. The short version:

• Platform fee: 4.5% base on donations under $100k, tiering down to 2.75% at $500k+ per donation.
• Fiscal sponsor fee (YGF): 1% on every donation.
• ACH processing: free.
• DAFPay processing: 3%.
• Disbursement fee: 1% when you actually pay a scholarship out.
• Off-system donation surcharge: 8% on gifts that bypass the donation page.
• Referral discount: 0.5% off the platform fee for every approved EOF that names you as the referrer — stacks indefinitely.

No setup fee, no minimum balance, no annual fee. Detailed breakdown, worked examples, and the full tier table live on our EOF fees page.

Every time a new EOF is approved and lists you as the referrer, your platform fee drops by 0.5 percentage points across the board. There’s no cap and the discounts stack. Two referrals at the base tier puts your platform fee at 3.5%. Four referrals at the $500k+ tier puts it at 0.75%.

Referrals get counted when the new EOF applicant names you specifically in their application. Once their EOF is reviewed and approved, your discount activates on every donation going forward.

No. Many traditional scholarship sponsors charge an annual percentage on assets under management, sometimes with a minimum balance requirement. EOFs on BrightLeaf charge once per donation, and never on balance. If your fund sits at $50,000 untouched for a year, you pay zero that year — versus the $500–$1,500 that traditional sponsors would charge.

Your tax receipt reflects the full amount you paid, regardless of payment method. Fees are what YGF spends to receive and process the gift; they don’t reduce your deductible amount.

That’s your call. The 1% disbursement fee comes off the gross disbursement amount. If you recommend a $1,000 scholarship, the recipient receives $990. If you want the recipient to receive exactly $1,000, gross up the recommendation to $1,011 and the fee comes off that. The dashboard shows the net before you confirm.

Directly to the student. EOF scholarships are awarded to the individual recipient by ACH, not paid to a school or institution. The recipient then uses the funds for their education the way they would any other personal scholarship — covering tuition, books, room and board, or whatever their educational needs require.

This direct-to-recipient model is faster than school-billing arrangements, keeps the recipient in control of how funds are applied to their education, and avoids the multi-week wait that institutional disbursements often involve.

Yeshiva Giving Fund makes the final decision on every scholarship award. As the EOF owner you recommend recipients — you’re acting in an advisory role, naming students you’d like the fund to support. YGF reviews each recommendation against the fund’s stated charitable purpose, the recipient’s eligibility, and applicable IRS rules. If everything aligns, the grant is approved and the disbursement goes out.

This donor-advisory structure is what makes the program legally workable as a charitable scholarship fund. The IRS distinguishes carefully between charitable scholarships (controlled by the sponsor) and private benefit arrangements (controlled by the donor). YGF’s independent decision authority is what keeps an EOF on the right side of that line.

No. You can recommend a specific student, but you can’t promise them an award before YGF reviews and approves the recommendation. In practice, the vast majority of recommendations get approved without issue. But the framing matters — recommendations are advisory, not directive, and donors shouldn’t promise outcomes that aren’t theirs to promise.

YGF policy requires that at least 15% of the scholarships awarded from each EOF each calendar year go to recipients who are not related to the donor. This is the line that keeps an EOF a charitable scholarship fund rather than a private family-benefit arrangement.

“Related” follows the standard IRS definition — spouse, children, parents, siblings, grandchildren, and their spouses. Cousins, in-laws, and unrelated community members are non-family for this purpose.

If by December 30 you haven’t recommended enough non-family scholarships to clear 15%, YGF will independently recommend scholarships from your fund to close the gap. You don’t lose access to your fund, and the disbursements still come from your balance — but the year-end recipients are chosen by YGF rather than by you.

The dashboard tracks your non-family percentage live and surfaces the warning early when you’re heading toward a year-end gap. There’s also a “Browse scholarship applications” link in your dashboard that lets you review and recommend students who’ve applied independently — usually the fastest way to close the gap on your own terms.

When you recommend a recipient, they receive an email invitation to complete a short intake form. The form confirms their identity, their connection to the charitable class your EOF serves, and the ACH details for receiving the disbursement directly. Most recipients complete it in under 10 minutes.

YGF requires the intake form to maintain an independent decision process and a clean audit trail across all the scholarship funds they administer. It’s not optional, but it is brief.

Yes. Many EOFs support the same students across multiple semesters or years. Once a recipient has completed the intake form, future recommendations from your fund don’t need to repeat the intake — the dashboard has a “Recommend Previous Scholarships Again” feature that lets you re-fund a past recipient in one click.

For every scholarship, YGF maintains a record covering: who recommended it, who the recipient is, the recipient’s eligibility under the charitable class, the amount and date, and any relationship disclosure. These records are needed for YGF’s own 501(c)(3) compliance and to demonstrate to the IRS that scholarships were awarded as charitable grants and not directed payments.

You can see your own EOF’s scholarship history in the dashboard at any time.

Your dashboard. Once you’re logged in, “My Education Opportunity Funds” lists every EOF you manage with the available-to-grant balance, recent transactions, and pending scholarships at a glance. Clicking “View Fund” opens the full single-fund view — current balance, pending donations and pending scholarships, monthly contribution history, transaction-level detail with filters, scholarship history, and the action buttons for everything you can do (recommend a grant, update your program info, donate to your own fund, message us).

From the single-fund view of your EOF, click Recommend Grant. You’ll fill out a short form covering the recipient’s name and contact, the amount, the purpose, and any relationship disclosure (whether the recipient is related to you). Submit, and your recommendation goes to YGF for review.

If the recipient is new, they’ll get an email invitation to complete the intake form. Once that’s done and YGF approves, the disbursement goes directly to the recipient by ACH — usually within a few business days.

After a recommendation is approved and the recipient has completed their intake form, the actual ACH disbursement to the recipient typically arrives within 2–3 business days. The full timeline from “I want to fund this student” to “money in their hands” depends mostly on how quickly the recipient completes their intake — sometimes hours, sometimes a week.

From the single-fund view, the Update Program Info button takes you to a short form where you can revise your fund description, charitable class, scholarship selection criteria, and the public-facing copy on your donation page. Changes save immediately and the donation page updates live. If you want to rename the fund itself or change its underlying purpose substantially, message us first — that change requires YGF to re-review.

Yes. EOFs can be wound down when their purpose is complete — the remaining balance is granted out (usually to a final round of recipients aligned with your charitable class), and the fund is closed. There’s no penalty and no minimum lifetime. Reach out and we’ll walk through it.

Donations are irrevocable once received — they’re already YGF’s, not yours — so “closing” means granting the balance out to charitable recipients, not refunding donors.

If you’re already logged in, the Message Us button is in your dashboard sidebar and on every fund page. If you’re not logged in or you’re a prospective fund owner, use the contact form. We answer in business hours, usually same-day, and there’s no upcharge for support.