Scholarships •
Your guide to the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship
Got an artistic side? You could win the $10,000 Create a Greeting Card Scholarship contest. Learn more about applying and winning this scholarship.
Do you consider yourself creative? Do you enjoy making art? If so, you can put that hobby and talent to work and win yourself all kinds of scholarships.
One of the more well-known examples is the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship, run by greeting card company the Gallery Collection. If you win this, you could walk home with $10,000 to cover college costs.
Below, we’ll explain how to enter this contest and what your entry is judged on. We’ll also go over advice for improving your winning chances and some more tips for finding scholarships like this one.
What is the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship?
The Create a Greeting Card Scholarship program offers applicants the opportunity to win scholarship funds for designing a new greeting card.
It runs every year from early June to early March, with winners announced in May. For instance, the 2022 competition ran from June 2021 to March 2022, with winners announced in May 2022.
This scholarship competition was launched by greeting card company the Gallery Collection in 2006—with the first award handed out in 2007—to give students a chance to win money for school and a shot at having their artwork published in the form of a greeting card. The winner gets a $10,000 cash scholarship, and their school gets a $1,000 prize.
How to enter the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship
The Create a Greeting Card Scholarship contest starts in early June each year and runs to mid-May the following year.
Here are the requirements to enter the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship competition:
Eligibility requirements
If you’re a US resident enrolled in high school or college, you’re eligible to apply for this scholarship.
Here are the eligibility requirements in more detail:
You must be 14 years or older at the time of entry and enrolled in high school, college, or university.
You must be a resident of the US or US territories.
You cannot be an employee or a family member of an employee of the Gallery Collection.
You must submit a design idea by March.
In terms of the design, it must be an original photo, picture, painting, drawing, or digital art that matches one of the Gallery Collection’s current themes.
Entering the contest
To enter the Create a Greeting Card contest, you’ll need to create an original greeting card design. It can’t infringe on anyone else’s intellectual property, so make sure yours is original.
You have a fair bit of creative freedom here. You can use any current theme from the Gallery Collection’s current section—although they do remind you to keep in mind their corporate clientele.
You can explore their preferred themes on their website.
Once you complete your design, you’ll fill out a short scholarship application form on the Gallery Collection’s website. You’ll also upload your work using that form.
Submissions open in early June each year and run to early March the following year. In 2022, they opened on June 7 and ran until March 2, 2023. The 2023 contest begins in June 2023.
Winning
The competition can be fierce—but don’t let that scare you off.
The Gallery Collection hires greeting card design experts to work with their panel of judges to select 100 greeting card entries each month, starting in June, to post on the competition’s Facebook page. Yours has to be selected for one of these months to move on.
People can then “like” this Facebook page to begin voting on designs. Everyone gets 1 vote per day, and the competition monitors for bots and other illicit voting methods this whole time.
Judges pick the top 10 entries by vote count each month, and they can also “save” other designs they believe are worthy of moving on.
Monthly voting ends in mid-April the following year. Once it does so, the top 5 of these semi-finalists with the most votes, along with 5 entries picked by the judges, move on to become Top 10 Finalists.
The judges then rate each of these finalists based on:
Overall aesthetic appeal
Quality of execution
Creativity and originality
Successful incorporation of design elements
Appropriateness for use as a greeting card
Attractiveness to the Gallery Collection’s corporate and consumer customers
Suitability as a design in Prudent’s Gallery Collection greeting card line
The winner is notified at the end of April following the competition. They win $10,000 in scholarship money, and their school receives a $1,000 prize. If any of the winner’s $10,000 is leftover after covering school expenses, it's paid directly to the winner.
To help you have a fighting chance, we’ve come up with 3 ways you can enhance your winning chances.
3 ways to enhance your chances of winning the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship
This scholarship contest is fairly easy to apply for and will be pretty fun for most entrants. Unfortunately, that means you’ve got plenty of competition. Try these tips to up your chances of moving through the contest stages and winning.
1. Spend time thinking and planning
This competition gives you a great degree of creative freedom, as long as you stick to the greeting card measurements and themes. And you’re up against a lot of competition.
So take some time to study the rules, brainstorm creative ideas, and plan things out. It’s ok to get started on a design and then redo it if you give yourself enough time.
Get some feedback on design concepts from your friends and family. This will help you get more ideas and outside perspectives, but it’ll also help you with the next tip.
2. Invite friends and family to vote on your entry
If your design makes it to the Facebook page, it’s all about getting votes. Make sure you urge your friends and family to go vote on your design. Bribing isn’t allowed, but make sure they understand what’s at stake—a cool $10,000 less in student debt in your future!
Invite them all to the page on Facebook, but communicate with them outside of Facebook as well.
Send them the link to your specific design, and make extra sure they don’t vote on the wrong one. Gently remind them that this could help you pay for an education if they vote every day. Every vote you can get counts.
3. Share your entry on social media
If you’re social-media savvy, here’s where that can pay off. Share links to your entry on your social media channels with a heartfelt message urging your followers, friends, and connections to go vote for you!
You can also get creative and break your design down into a funny TikTok or Instagram video to get people engaged.
How to find more scholarships like the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship
Not confident that you can beat out 1000s of other applicants with your design? Don’t worry—there are plenty more scholarships out there, whether or not you win the Create a Greeting Card contest. Here are a few ways to find them:
Fill out the FAFSA every year
Filling out the Free Application For Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, doesn’t take too long, yet it’s your biggest ticket to qualifying for scholarships and other aid. It’s free and makes college financial planning easier, so you should do it every year.
You should do your FAFSA every year as soon as possible, as some forms of aid can run out.
Ask for help
Want help filling out the FAFSA and finding other valuable scholarships? Mos can help! Mos is a money app for students that combines 1-on-1 financial aid advice with a debit card, scholarship search tools, tuition negotiation, and much more.
Find the best plan for you to explore everything Mos has to offer. Oh, and not to flex, but Mos members who work with a Mos advisor save an average of $3,500 per school year—not too shabby!
Use scholarship aggregator websites
Look for “scholarships” online, and you’ll find plenty of websites that are essentially scholarship search engines.
You can search by keywords or categories, then search and filter to find the right scholarships for you.
Plus, you can find related scholarships you may not have heard of.
For instance, maybe you search for the Dr. Pepper Tuition Giveaway. Right below it might be all sorts of other “giveaways” that don’t take long to apply for.
Contact your school’s financial aid office
The financial aid office is usually a great place to get scholarship help. They can point you toward scholarships you might qualify for and offer you personalized tips on finding and winning more scholarships.
Talk to your guidance counselor or academic advisor
If you’re still in high school, speaking with your guidance counselor can help you get a jumpstart on your scholarship search. They’ll know about scholarships given out by schools and institutions in your area.
However, if you’re in college, you might consider bringing up scholarships the next time you meet with your academic advisor. They can also be a good resource for scholarship advice.
Check with your or your parents’ employers
These days, more companies are offering forms of college aid to attract and retain employees.
Check with your parents to see if their employers offer scholarships, grants, or other aid to employees and family members. If so, your competition may not be as high as with other external scholarships.
If you have a job, your employer might include tuition reimbursement in your benefits. This means they’ll pay some of your tuition bill at the end of the semester if your grades are good enough.
Create a Greeting Card Scholarship FAQs
Have more questions about the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship? Check out our FAQs below for more information.
What types of designs are allowed for the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship?
The Gallery Collection lets you use original art, photographs, or computer graphics for your card. You can submit computer graphics online in JPEG (.jpg) format on the contest’s entry page. If you make original art, you can either snap a digital photo or scan it and send it in via that page.
What themes can I use in my card design?
The Gallery Collection lets you make any design consistent with their current product themes. Their most popular themes are Christmas, birthdays, and anniversaries.
You can find themes on their website—the Gallery Collection urges students to browse their site for ideas.
All that said, their target market is corporate clientele, so keep that in mind when designing.
What happens if I don’t win, but the Gallery Collection uses my design as a greeting card?
The Create a Greeting Card competition’s rules state that your design is still your property after you submit it. However, the Gallery Collection sometimes uses non-winning submissions for greeting card designs.
If they use yours, they state that they’ll pay you accordingly—so that’s another way you can get paid from this process! Make sure to keep in contact with the company just in case.
Can I apply for scholarships while I’m in school?
Scholarships are available year-round, but you have to pay attention to deadlines.
For instance, some might be due at the end of the winter semester—such as the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship. Others could be due at the end of the fall semester.
Scholarships with rolling deadlines are available regularly. For instance, the Courage to Grow Scholarship awards money to a winning submission once a month.
What is the easiest scholarship to get?
The easiest types of scholarships to apply for, in general, are federal ones that require no essay or special requirements. Most of these no-essay scholarships only make you answer a few quick questions before you submit your application.
Now, these scholarships aren’t always easy to win. You’ll be up against plenty of competition since they’re easy to apply for.
Niche scholarships are often easier to win. For example, if you’re a minority student, you have a higher chance of winning a scholarship created for your specific minority—like Native American—as you’ll have fewer competitors.
Another example might be a major-related scholarship. If you’re studying chemistry, your competition will only be other chemistry majors.
Conclusion
If you’re in touch with your creative side, the Create a Greeting Card Scholarship can be a fun way to compete for money to fund your education. The $10,000 prize is nothing to sneeze at—especially if art and design is a hobby of yours.
And even if your design doesn’t win, there’s still a chance for you to earn some cold hard cash—the Gallery Collection may choose to use your design as a new greeting card and pay you for it.
Plus, there are many scholarships out there, and by joining Mos you get access to the largest scholarship pool in North America ($160 billion).
Mos is a money app for college students. It comes with a fee-free debit card to help you manage your money, access to scholarships, and much more. Plus, some Mos plans come with 1-on-1 access to a financial aid advisor to help with the FAFSA and hand-picked scholarship opportunities. Explore memberships today!
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