Scholarships & Grants

Unfortunately, no! You’ll need to choose one or the other, as best suits your program’s needs.

Each scholarship provides a $325 coupon that you can use on the Literacy Texas conference registration portal. 

If you use your scholarship coupon before early bird rates end, the scholarship will cover 100% of your registration fee. If you use your scholarship coupon after early bird rates end, you will be responsible for paying any remaining registration costs.

In 2025, regular registration fees are $400.

Conference registration includes:

• Attendance at both main conference days (August 5 & 6); 
• Lunch* on both conference days; and
• An invitation to the Conference VIP Reception on the evening before the conference officially begins.

*Please note that at the Embassy Suites San Marcos, breakfast is included with each hotel overnight stay. 

No, not this year. If you want to attend the pre-conference sessions, applying for a grant may be a better option for you – see more under “Grants” on this page.

To be eligible, your program must:

• Be based in Texas,
• Focus on adult and/or family literacy,
• Be a 501(c)(3), and
• Not receive federal funding.

We understand, and we’re sympathetic. The conference scholarships are made possible by the funding that Literacy Texas receives from the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), for Professional Development Support for Nonprofit Adult Literacy Organizations.

TWC’s goal is to provide quality training and professional development to 501(c)(3) adult and family literacy programs, so programs that don’t fall into that category aren’t eligible for this opportunity. 

YES. If the services your program provides are not supported by federal funding, that program is eligible, even if other programs in the larger organization do receive that funding. 

Example 1: The Digital Literacy program at your organization receives federal funding for their activities. The folks you want to send to the conference all work in your ESL program. You ARE ELIGIBLE to apply for conference scholarships.

Example 2: The ABE program at your organization receives federal funding for their activities. The folks you want to send to the conference all work in the ABE program. You ARE NOT ELIGIBLE to apply for conference scholarships.

Yes, absolutely! The scholarships are intended to help make the conference as affordable as possible, and there is no limit on how many years eligible programs can apply.

Literacy Texas will communicate with the program representative who filled out the scholarship application form, and let them know if their application has been successful.

If it was approved, we’ll let them know:

• How many scholarships their program has received;
• Next steps, starting with payment of any deposits due;
• The date by which the scholarship coupon must be used before it will expire; and
• How to register for the conference using a scholarship coupon.

It’s our goal to communicate with applicants as soon as possible; we know you need this information to make plans. Please check your spam if you don’t hear from us in the timeframe outlined in the application.

Scholarship applications are approved in two rounds. In 2025, Round 1 closed March 21, and applications received in Round 1 were given priority. We have communicated with all Round 1 applicants about the status of their application.

Round 2 applications are approved on a rolling basis, usually weekly, in the months leading up to the conference, until all scholarships have been allocated.

NO, you will need to register separately.

The program representative who submitted the application will hear back from Literacy Texas about how many scholarships their program has received. They’ll pay a deposit for each scholarship and receive a scholarship coupon for the program to use.

Once the coupon has been received, the program representative will distribute it to the people attending the conference so that each person can register online.

Just having your coupon code is not enough! You must use the coupon in our conference registration portal to complete your registration. Make sure you use it promptly – scholarship coupons have an expiration date.

The deposit covers most of the payment Literacy Texas has to make to the hotel for a single attendee. It reflects the majority (but not all) of the money we will lose if that attendee accepts a scholarship, we prepare to host them and make the payment to the hotel, and then that registrant doesn’t come.

Deposits are fully refundable in the weeks following the conference, if the recipient meets all scholarship conditions (see above).

And yes – the deposit went up in 2025, from $75 the last couple years to $100 this year. This reflects rising costs elsewhere, but still does not cover all the money we will owe the hotel if a scholarship recipient doesn’t attend.

The deposit will be payable for each scholarship awarded directly after it is approved. We will send you all the information about how to pay, and after the payment is made, we’ll send you your registration coupon.

Deposits are fully refundable if the scholarship recipient fulfills all scholarship conditions, or cancels their conference attendance by letting Literacy Texas know by close of business on July 21, 2025, approx. ten business days before the conference begins (and ideally earlier).

Deposits will NOT be refunded if your registration coupon expires unused – please communicate with us if you decide not to use a scholarship once it’s been awarded!

Deposit refunds will be processed by our online payment system in the weeks after the conference and it’s our goal to have all eligible refunds completed by mid-August.

We will form a waitlist of any scholarship requests that were not initially successful. If any scholarships are returned, are not needed, or expire, we will contact programs on the waitlist to redistribute scholarships.

Scholarship recipients must register for the conference by the date specified in your approval email, or your scholarship coupon will expire and be redistributed to another applicant.

If you are a one-person program, please go ahead and apply for yourself. Our goal is to group applications easily by program so we can distribute them as fairly as we can. Programs with one staff person are just as welcome to apply as larger programs.

If you are a volunteer at an organization, please talk to the coordinator, manager, or director of your program before you apply for a scholarship. We want to avoid multiple applications from the same program – and we definitely don’t want scholarship applications to be submitted without the coordinators’ knowledge. 

Yes! An application is not binding. We’re happy to hear from you even if you’re still deciding, though please be aware that deposits will be payable directly after scholarships are approved.

If you decide not to attend, we ask that you get in touch with us as soon as possible, so we can re-allocate to another program any scholarships you received, refund any deposit(s) no longer needed, and/or take you off the waitlist.

After a certain period of time, unused scholarships will expire and be reallocated to someone else. We’ll make you aware of all dates and deadlines throughout the application process.

Directors and managers can distribute at their discretion any scholarships awarded to their program. That said, the primary goal of the scholarships is to help provide staff at community-based and other non-federally funded programs with quality professional development that they might not otherwise be able to afford.

It’s our hope that staff from programs across the state will return from the conference to their workplaces and share what they learned with the rest of the team, and with volunteers, increasing the impact of the conference while keeping costs low for each program.

The free regional symposia we put on throughout the year have volunteers as the primary audience, have no associated costs and minimal travel, and there is no limit on how many volunteers from any one program can attend each symposium.

Program managers – please promote your local symposium to volunteers, which is usually a better fit than the conference.

Yes, but you MUST let us know of the change. Once a scholarship coupon is used during the online registration process, it will be linked to the specific person who registered. We will record their name, food preferences, contact information, and other details, and will use that to send conference reminders and updates; create our check-in lists, menus, and printed name-tags; allocate professional development credit; and more.

Furthermore, the original registrant will be the person we look to, to see if all scholarship conditions have been met. This directly impacts the return of your deposit.

If the person who registered is no longer going to attend, and someone else from the program will attend in their place, we need to hear from you ASAP so we can update our records. We’ve had more than one instance of someone arriving at the conference and we have no record of them – because they took someone’s place but didn’t tell us. That causes a lot of extra work and delay which can be avoided with some prior communication. Thank you in advance!

To make updates, call Lindsay at Literacy Texas: 972-926-3155 or contact us using this online form.

Sorry, no. The scholarships are for adult or family literacy only and the conference program is focused on adult and family literacy needs. We hope you’ll still consider attending if the program is of interest! Registration rates and info can be found here.

Unfortunately not. The scholarships are funded by the Texas Workforce Commission and are restricted to Texas programs. You are still welcome at the conference, however! Registration rates are on this page and the early bird rate is good through late June.