MTS Scholarship Extensions

From a legal and tax perspective an MTS scholarship is an “academic scholarship” – that is, a scholarship awarded on merit, to an eligible recipient to enable or assist them to undertake a course of study.

A number of graduating MTS scholarship apprentices will enroll in theological study at degree level (or higher) in the year following their apprenticeship.

So if:

• the applicant’s MTS Apprenticeship Scholarship has been fully funded,     and
• the supporters of an apprentice’s scholarship are prepared to continue supporting the apprentice’s scholarship,

then MTS is prepared to extend the scholarship of their graduating apprentice in order to asist them to study theological study at degree level (or higher).

We acknowledge that some churches, quite reasonably, may be planning to “re-cycle” existing scholarship supporters from a completing scholarship apprentice towards supporting a new scholarship apprentice who will start the following year.   For this reason MTS requires the church to request a Scholarship Extension for one or more of their graduating scholarship apprentices, or their endorsement of any extension request received directly by MTS from an existing scholarship holder.

Churches may prefer that close friends and extended family are the primary donors supporting a Scholarship Extension, however please note that once a Scholarship Extension is offered MTS has no control over who chooses to financially support the Scholarship Extension, nor does it have any understanding of a donor’s relationship with the scholarship recipient.

There are some differences between an existing MTS Apprenticeship Scholarship and a Scholarship Extension – the most significant one pertains to how the value of scholarship payments will be determined.   Under a MTS Apprenticeship Scholarship, the recipient is scheduled to receive a certain level of scholarship payments (and the challenge is to then to raise sufficient support to fund the scheduled level of scholarship payments); with an Scholarship Extension MTS will simply set the recipient’s scholarship payments based on the level of financial donations MTS is receiving in support of the particular Scholarship Extension.  If some supporters of a Scholarship Extension fall away part way through the recipient’s studies and are not replaced, MTS will reduce the recipient’s scholarship payments accordingly.  Conversely, if a Scholarship Extension recipient attracts new supporters, MTS will increase the value of scholarship payments.

To apply to have MTS extend an existing scholarship – the trainer should complete the online Application to Extend an MTS Scholarship.

SUSPENDING AN EXISTING MTS SCHOLARSHIP

A trainer may apply to suspend a scholarship at any time pior to completion of the scholarship – an email stating this request and outlining the circumstances should be sent to [email protected]

Similarly, a trainer may apply to re-start a suspended scholarship by sending an email to [email protected] .  A trainer who has recently requested that a suspended scholarship be restarted, could also apply for the scholarship to be extended.