bowl.com
ARLINGTON, Texas – The United States Bowling Congress has approved final policy revisions for its Scholarship Management and Account Reporting for Tenpins (SMART) program. The policy includes revisions based on a comment period earlier this year.
In April 2021, the USBC proposed a series of policy changes designed to increase scholarship benefits for SMART Recipients. All proposals were open for a comment period until June 30. After reviewing the feedback from webinars and submitted comments, the final policy was approved by the Oversight Committee and USBC Board of Directors.
The final policy maintains the proposed concept of allocating a portion of future investment gains and expired scholarships directly to SMART Recipient accounts by providing additional scholarships for those actively using SMART funds and creating a new SMART Recipient grant program.
The primary revision from the policy proposed in April 2021 is an adjustment that maintains the current practice of returning expired Recipient scholarships to the assigning Provider as new unassigned funds. This allows Providers to keep their expired Recipient funds in their local program.
“The goal of these revisions was to provide more scholarships to youth bowlers, while maintaining a good structure for successful SMART Providers,” said Frank Wilkinson, chair of the USBC SMART Committee. “We feel these adjustments, based on feedback from our stakeholders, meet the needs of the Providers and Recipients and encourage youth bowlers to actively use their SMART scholarships.”
The overall funding model will maintain a 50-50 split for expired funds and earnings between Provider and Recipient accounts as originally proposed. However, a change in the final policy shifts a greater portion of new bonus scholarships to active Recipients requesting SMART funds.
As previously proposed, Providers will be required to use unassigned funds received from SMART within two years, starting with expiration of unassigned funds beginning in 2024.
Also included in the final policy is the ability for a Recipient to transfer their scholarship funds to another family member.
Minor policy adjustments also were made to each of the four SPM proposals. Changes made to SPM No. 1, No. 2 and No. 4 will become effective immediately. Changes made to SPM No. 3 will become effective as of Aug. 1, 2023.
Complete language of the new SMART policies and FAQ are published on BOWL.com.