Join the KASF

Since its founding thirty years ago, the major focus of the Korean American Scholarship Foundation (KASF) to date has been to raise scholarship funds. Due to unwavering leadership and generous contributions from our first-generation Korean American community leaders, the KASF scholarship fund now totals over $3.4M.

As an organization, the KASF possesses many strengths. One of these strengths is the intellectual capital of our members. For example, our board of directors consists of community leaders who have excelled in the areas of academia, business, corporate and civil service. This is a strength that the KASF uniquely possesses and this is why KASF is in best position to leverage this pool of talents, encouraging even greater contributions so our young students can become the next generation of scholars, business leaders, corporate executives, and community/civil leaders. The collective knowledge and experience we have as our core can and should be harnessed to expand our primary mission of providing financial scholarships.

While the fundraising should remain its top priority, the KASF has a number of opportunities to make fundraising more effective, as well as to expand the mission/role of the KASF. Specifically, our opportunities may include the following:

Mentor Program:

• Identify volunteers with expertise in several different areas/fields of academic study
• Establish regular contacts with students in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area
• Hold seminars of general as well as special interest, i.e. topics relevant to the Korean
  American student community

Work Scholarship:

• Identify KASF member-owned businesses that can offer work scholarships
• Identify local opportunities for internships within corporate America
• Summer or part-time basis job and internship opportunities

Student Relations:

• "Brainstorm" with high school/college students regarding what KASF can/should do to involve them
• Teach them to "grow their own food" - seminars on how to find scholarships
• Hold career counseling (including interviewing, networking, business startups, etc.)

Information Technology:

• Identify opportunities to leverage technologies (e.g. electronic application processing)
• Create electronic discussion forum for officer/member discussions
• Collect and report on information relating to the KASF members and activities (e.g. demographics,
  external data, trends, etc.)
• Participate in the KASF homepage redesign effort (e.g. fundraising over the web, finding
  scholarships from sister sources, links to other Korean American web sites, etc.)

By successfully implementing the program described above, the KASF will be actively engaged with the recipients of our scholarships at a "grassroots" level. As such, the role of the KASF and the impact it will have on our young students and the Korean-American community at large will be more pronounced. Furthermore, these programs will strengthen the commitment of our board of directors and will be more gratifying to our directors as they engage more actively with these younger students by sharing their knowledge.

Lastly, to implement these programs, we need lots of volunteers. Since a large part of these efforts involves communicating with our young students, we need to begin by recruiting second-generation Korean American students for their help. By actively engaging them early, we will have begun to lay a strong foundation so the next generations can carry on the mission of the KASF and more importantly, "contribute" to our society at large.