Hurliman Scholarship Foundation

Hurliman Scholarship Foundation is a small, single-purpose, family-run scholarship fund, not a general grantmaker — grant seekers should treat it as an individual-student aid program, never as a fit for nonprofit program grants. Founded in memory of Canon City physician Dr. Jack C. Hurliman and his wife Edith E. Hurliman (a registered nurse), the Foundation is still governed entirely by their descendants: President Deanne Nocetti, Founding President Lila L. Anastas (Dr. Hurliman's niece), and board members Niki Calastas, Keira Nocetti Baxter, Mikaela Nocetti Carson, and Zoe Anastas. Officer compensation is nominal (about $7,500-$9,200 for the President/Treasurer role in recent years, per Form 990 data), signaling this is a volunteer-driven, hands-on family board rather than a staffed institution — there is no program officer to cultivate a relationship with beyond the shared inbox (hurlimansf@gmail.com).

There is no LOI stage, no multi-year courtship, and no site visit — this is a single annual open-application competition with a hard geographic gate. Applicants must be high school seniors residing in Fremont, Custer, or Pueblo County, Colorado; everyone outside that tri-county footprint is automatically ineligible regardless of merit. Within that pool, the Foundation runs a straightforward academic-merit-plus-character screen: a 3.5 unweighted GPA floor, SAT/ACT scores, an official transcript through the sixth semester, a one-page personal essay, and two Personal Rating Forms mailed directly by teachers, counselors, or community leaders. Finalists are invited to in-person panel interviews (April 10-11 for the 2027 cycle) before winners are notified after April 25.

First-time applicants should understand the two-tier structure: a small number of flagship four-year awards (2-8 recipients recently, up to $30,000/year covering tuition, room/board, and books) sit alongside a much larger one-year award tranche (9-13 recipients recently, up to $15,000 each). The Foundation places no restriction on field of study or which accredited U.S. institution a winner attends — recent four-year winners have gone to CU Boulder, Colorado College, Colorado School of Mines, Brown, Swarthmore, and Spelman, among others — so academic ambition and college choice are not limiting factors, only county residency and the character/merit bar.

Hurliman is a genuine micro-foundation by grantmaking standards: FY2023 total assets were $4,253,669, annual giving was $722,306, and grants paid to individuals were $613,159 — figures drawn straight from its Form 990-PF filings. Because 100% of its giving is undergraduate scholarships to individuals (not organizations), the median individual award size in the Foundation's tracked grant data is $8,236, ranging from $1,207 to $27,083 across 32 recorded disbursements, with an average of $11,235. That distribution sits below the headline $30,000/year four-year award because it blends renewal-year one-year awards, partial disbursements, and smaller top-ups; the true "sticker" awards are the two published tiers — up to $30,000/year (four-year track) and up to $15,000 (one-year track).

Giving has grown steadily and materially: grants paid rose from $269,525 (FY2013) to $286,946 (FY2014) to $379,140 (FY2019) and then jumped to $538,899 (FY2022) and $613,159 (FY2023) — a 62% increase from FY2019 to FY2023 alone, and more than double the FY2013 level. Total giving (which includes administrative/program costs beyond direct grants) followed the same arc: $386,682 (FY2013) to $487,833 (FY2019) to $722,306 (FY2023), a 48% four-year increase. Cumulative grantee data spanning multiple years shows 133 tracked awards to Colorado (CO) recipients totaling $1,539,228, averaging $11,573 per award — consistent with the tiered structure once renewals are counted individually.

Notably, total assets have not kept pace with rising giving: they stood at roughly $5.5-5.7M across FY2011-2015 and have declined to $4,253,669 by FY2023, a roughly 25% drop over the period even as net investment income remained the Foundation's sole revenue source (contributions_received was $0 in every filed year — this is a closed, self-funded corpus, not one soliciting outside donors). That combination — rising payout, flat-to-declining corpus, zero outside fundraising — means the Foundation is drawing down its endowment relative to a decade ago, which grant seekers should read as a funder in a generous-but-finite phase rather than one scaling indefinitely. Geographically, funding is 100% concentrated in three adjacent south-central Colorado counties (Fremont, Custer, Pueblo), with no out-of-state or multi-state expansion signal anywhere in the data.

Hurliman's peer set in the underlying data is drawn from foundations of similar asset size that share its IRS NTEE code (R20 — filed under "Advocacy"), which is a classification quirk worth flagging up front: none of the five matched peers are scholarship funders. They are civil-rights and advocacy nonprofits, and the comparison should be read as an asset-tier benchmark only, not a true program-fit comparison.

By asset size, Hurliman sits mid-pack among this cluster (below the two ~$4.4-4.5M advocacy funds, above the three smaller ones), but it is functionally incomparable on mission and applicant type — it is the only individual-scholarship funder in the set, and the only one with a fully open, published annual application process with a fixed deadline. A more useful real-world peer set would be other Colorado county- or community-based scholarship funds (e.g., regional community foundation scholarship funds serving Pueblo, Fremont, or El Paso counties), which this data bundle does not include; grant seekers should benchmark Hurliman's $8,236 median individual award and up to $30,000/year top tier against those local scholarship competitors rather than against national advocacy funders of similar asset size.

No independent press coverage, leadership transitions, or new-program announcements were found for Hurliman in 2025-2026 — this is consistent with a small, family-governed foundation that communicates almost exclusively through its own website rather than press releases or trade coverage. The clearest activity signal is the Foundation's own award-winner postings and its published cycle calendar. For the 2026 cycle, eight students received four-year scholarships (destinations included CU Boulder, Colorado College, Colorado School of Mines, University of Arizona, UCCS, and Denver University) and nine more received one-year awards up to $15,000, following the standard post-April 25 notification window. That followed a larger 2025 cohort (7 four-year winners, including students headed to Middle Tennessee State, Spelman College, and CU Boulder, plus 13 one-year winners) and a 2024 cohort (7 four-year winners, including University of Oregon, Brown, and Swarthmore admits, plus 9 one-year winners).

The Foundation has already posted its full 2027 cycle timeline as of this research (applications open December 1, 2026; postmark deadline January 25, 2027; finalist panel interviews April 10-11, 2027; notification after April 25, 2027), indicating normal, on-schedule operations with no disruption. Financial filings show grants paid growing from $538,899 (FY2022) to $613,159 (FY2023), the fourth consecutive year of increase, which lines up with the rising winner counts seen in the 2024-2026 award classes. Board composition (Deanne Nocetti as President, Lila L. Anastas as Founding President, and four additional family board members) shows no turnover in the data reviewed. Grant seekers should not expect a news cycle around this funder — the annual award-winner announcement on the Foundation's own site is effectively its only public communication event each year, typically appearing in the weeks after the late-April notification deadline.

Time everything around the tri-county residency gate and the postmark deadline, not around a rolling or flexible cycle: for the upcoming 2027 cycle, applications open December 1, 2026, and the postmark deadline is January 25, 2027 — a roughly 8-week window. Missing residency in Fremont, Custer, or Pueblo County is an instant disqualifier regardless of academic strength, so confirm eligibility before investing time in the essay and recommendations.

The single biggest process risk is the recommendation-letter mechanic: both required Personal Rating Forms must be mailed directly to the Foundation by the recommender (a teacher, counselor, or community leader), not submitted by the student. Ask recommenders in the fall, well before the January postmark, and confirm they understand they are mailing the form themselves — a recommender who procrastinates can disqualify an otherwise strong applicant through no fault of their own.

On substance, the Foundation explicitly screens for "superior scholastic ability and strength of character," not GPA alone: the 3.5 unweighted GPA floor and SAT/ACT scores are a gate, but the one-page personal essay and community-service record are what differentiate finalists. Given the founders' backgrounds (a small-town physician and nurse who built a family medical practice and hospital in Canon City), essays that connect personal service, community commitment, or first-generation/local-roots narratives to the tri-county area likely resonate, though the Foundation places no field-of-study restriction — recent four-year winners have pursued everything from engineering (Colorado School of Mines) to liberal arts (Swarthmore, Brown).

A common mistake is treating this as a reach-only, four-year-or-nothing competition: because the same pool feeds a larger one-year award tranche (9-13 winners recently, up to $15,000), strong-but-not-top-2 applicants still have real odds and should apply fully rather than self-selecting out. Also apply to (ideally secure acceptance at) an accredited, full-time U.S. college before or alongside the scholarship application — the Foundation wants to see that path already in motion, and four-year awards are subject to annual academic review, so they are not "set and forget." Direct any process questions to hurlimansf@gmail.com; there is no phone number published, and the mailing address for physical submissions is 5150 Fair Oaks Blvd. 101-306, Carmichael, CA 95608.