Anoka-Ramsey Community Colleges and Anoka Technical College’s foundations are non-profit organizations funded to help students with their financial needs. 

Lindsey Schiller, the Development Director for the Coon Rapids foundation said, “When our funds come in, we want them to go right back out to the students helping with scholarships, crisis grants, you know through our campus cupboard. It could be for a piece of equipment or materials and supplies for our students.” 

Not all of these are school related, “Crisis grants are a way to help students with rent, with utilities, kinda those unforeseen financial situations. Maybe it’s a car fix or a vehicle fix,” Schiller said. 

One of ways the foundations help with school related expenses is scholarships. More than $250,000 in scholarships were disbursed during the 2019–2020 academic year to Cambridge campus and Coon Rapids campus students. Since 1987, the Anoka Technical College’s foundation has provided over $5,000,000 in support of Anoka Technical College students and programs.

“I like to tell students to think of it as a job, it might take anywhere from three to five hours to fill out an application because there’s a lot of opportunity. We have a lot of different scholarships so different criteria,” said Schiller. 

“If awarded I think they’ll typically hear back, I would say by the end of May even though school is out, and so if awarded they will receive the funds in fall semester and in spring, so it’ll be split between the two” Schiller later said, 

Sharing your needs with the foundations will help them know where students need help. Emailing them or talking to instructors and asking them to pass it along are both effective ways of helping the foundation. 

Another way the foundation knows what the students need is through the student representative; that spot is currently empty, and they are looking for a replacement. 

Gallery • 4 Photos

This photo of Anoka-Ramsey Community College in Coon Rapids, which the Campus Eye obtained from the Anoka Ramsey Community College website, has been authenticated based on its contents and other Campus Eye reporting.

Applications for Anoka Ramsey and Anoka Technical College are the same for both campuses and are available online, as well as instructions.

“One of the things that our bylaw had in the past was that the student rep was a student senate president or something like that, so our board had a good conversation about this and that it didn’t necessarily need to be somebody from the student senate although it certainly could be. We wanted to keep it more broad and opportunity to all students, just like we do with our funds,” Schiller said.