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2025 Eligibility & Application Information - Coming Soon
2024 Nelson Fund Scholarship Recipients Announced!
We extend our sincerest congratulations to all nine of these deserving 2024 scholarship recipients! Awards totaling $110,000 are made possible from the Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson Vacaville Fund. We wish these students every possible success as they embark on the next chapter of their lives!
Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson Scholarship - $20,000 scholarship, payable at $5,000 over four years.
Grace B. Powell Vacaville High School Scholarship - $20,000 scholarship, payable at $5,000 over four years.
Auldin Briggs Achievement Scholarship - $2,500 scholarship, as a one-time payment.
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For scholarship renewal recipients: to receive your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th annual renewal payments, click on the scholarship name below to complete and submit your Student Enrollment Verification Form as an online Google Form.
For new 2024 scholarship recipients (4-year or 1-year awards): to recieve your first scholarship payment, click on the scholarship name below to access the Student Enrollment Verification Form as a PDF fill-in-the-blank doc. Complete the form and submit to SCF (scholarships@solanocf.org).
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Five exemplary graduating seniors garnered a 2023 scholarship. These generous awards totaled $82,500.
Congratulations to these eight 2022 Nelson Fund scholarship winners.
Auldin Briggs Achievement Scholarship - $2,500 scholarship, a one-time payment.
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For 2020 and 2021, due to COVID-19 constraints and considerations, SCF had to make changes to our 'normal' Scholarship Fund Cycle and procedures. We celebrated the graduating Class of 2020 and 2021 by offering a larger number of Nelson Fund scholarships to eligible applicants. SCF was not able to provide 4-year automatically renewable Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson scholarships to the class of 2020 or 2021 recipients. The Briggs, Powell, and Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson Scholarships were awarded at $2,500 each; all 2020 and 2021 recipients who met the annual renewal requirements were eligible to re-apply for additional scholarship payments of $2,500 annually (through 2024). _________________________________________________________
Originally named “Vacaville Community Foundation” by Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson in 1967, this fund focused on benefitting Vacaville residents. Technically not a “community foundation,” but a private foundation, the Nelsons promoted education through the granting of scholarships to seniors in Vacaville high schools for college and postgraduate study. The secondary purpose was, and still is to promote public recreation, preservation of the environment, and preservation of historical records and relics.
In 2008, this private foundation dissolved and moved the assets to a new endowed scholarship fund at the Solano Community Foundation. SCF is now the successor and administrator of The Harry and Eleanor D. Nelson Vacaville Endowment Fund and their scholarship program.
Historically, most of the funds distributed have been as scholarship awards. Initially, grants made were one-time, non-renewable awards of a few hundred dollars to a handful of students.
Harry Nelson graduated from the University of California at Davis and was an agriculturalist with landholdings in the Vacaville area. His wife, Eleanor Dexter Nelson, a native of Lodi, graduated from the University of California at Berkeley. She began teaching in Vacaville in 1920 and retired from teaching Spanish and English at Vacaville High School in 1951. During her "retirement," Mrs. Nelson devoted her energies to community service, including inauguration of a city recreational program for youth, the organization of Fiesta Days, and the establishment of the Vacaville Museum.