Delivering Emergency Aid to Students Across 54 Minnesota State Campuses

Summary

Beam supports a system of 33 schools within Minnesota State to administer funds provided by the Office of Higher Education through the Emergency Assistance for Postsecondary Students (EAPS) grant program. Each institution under MN State has its own Beam case management platform and application portal. They are all utilizing the same application, but program advocates from each school have control of their funding to decide who gets awarded and how much. The Minnesota State system has a parent Hashboard Dashboard to track application volume and funds disbursed per institution.

Background

Minnesota State consists of 26 colleges and 7 universities with 54 campuses throughout the state and offers 3,885 academic programs. They offer the lowest tuition in the state with an average cost of tuition and fees at Minnesota State colleges being $6,127 and $9,884 at Minnesota State universities before grants. Overall, 67% of students receive financial aid, but between 35% and 61% of Minnesota State students graduate with no debt at all.

Challenge

Most Minnesota State schools haven’t managed an emergency aid fund before, and the system office wanted to have some consistency in the way these funds would be managed at each school. Managing the emergency fund was just one of the many daily responsibilities that each administrator had, so they did not want this to become burdensome or take too much of their time. Students also needed a way to receive the funding quickly since these are for time-sensitive emergencies.

Beam's Solution

Beam was able to provide a unique application link to each institution’s specific application portal so that program administrators only had access to their school’s applications. Using the same application across all schools, students would apply via Beam, and program administrators would review applications through their case dashboards. Applicant data was updated in real-time so students could get approved within the same day they applied. Each school had the freedom to decide what eligibility requirements they had for their specific program and ultimately decided who should receive funding. Applicants were immediately notified if they were approved so they could log back into their accounts and select the payment option that best suited their needs. Both direct deposit and Zelle meant funding could be received the same day they were approved, but there is also a prepaid card option for students without bank accounts.

All Minnesota state school data was rolled up into one data dashboard that could be accessed at the system level. A custom dashboard view with all pertinent data meant that reports could be downloaded and shared as needed, which made reporting to the Minnesota State Office of Higher Education easy.

Results

$1M awarded to date (since April 2024)
3,000+ application processed
1,500 students received funding