How to Fill Out the Trail’s End College Scholarship Payout Form

To claim your Scouting popcorn scholarship money, download the Trail’s End College Scholarship Payout Form, fill in both sections, and email it with four supporting documents to scholarship@trails-end.com before the next quarterly processing date. Payments go out only four times a year — March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15 — and can take up to three weeks after that to reach your school.¹

Confirm You’re Still Eligible Before You Start

The scholarship program closed to new enrollments after March 31, 2020, and sales from 2023 onward no longer generate credits. Only Scouts who were already enrolled with qualifying sales can draw against a balance.²

To request a payout, you have to be between 18 and 24 years old and enrolled full-time at a nationally or state-accredited college, university, vocational school, or technical school, actively pursuing a degree or certification. Auditing classes or part-time enrollment won’t qualify.³

Miss any of those requirements and you forfeit your entire accumulated balance, not just the current request. Aging out of the 18-to-24 window, dropping to part-time, or transferring to an unaccredited school all wipe out the account. Trail’s End also reserves the right to terminate or modify the program at any time at its sole discretion, so a long gap year is a real risk.³

Filling Out the Form

The form is a single page with two sections: Scout Information and University Information. Every field matters, because Trail’s End uses it to verify your identity, match you to your account, and route the check to the right office.¹

Scout Information

Enter your full legal name and Social Security number. If your scholarship balance is over $2,000, you must provide the full SSN for tax reporting; for balances under $2,000, only the last four digits are required.⁴

Then fill in your street address, city, state, zip code, phone number, and email address. Use an email you actually check — Trail’s End sends payment confirmations there. Finish the section with your BSA council name and the council’s city and state.¹

University Information

The second section asks for the name of your school, a contact person there, the street address, city, state, zip, phone, and fax number, plus your student ID. Trail’s End mails the check directly to the school at the address you list, so these fields have to point to whichever office handles third-party scholarship payments. That’s usually financial aid or the bursar.¹

Call the financial aid office before you write anything down. Ask for the exact name and mailing address they want third-party scholarship checks sent to, and get a contact name. Schools handle this constantly and will give you the answer in a minute.

The Four Documents You Need to Attach

The form alone won’t trigger a payment. You have to send four supporting items along with it, for five pieces total:¹

Your high school transcript, official or unofficial.
A letter of recommendation from an educator or a Scout leader. A brief signed letter on letterhead is standard.
A one-page essay on the impact Scouting has had on your life. Keep it to a single page.
A class schedule issued by the registrar’s office at your college. This is how Trail’s End verifies full-time enrollment.
The completed payout form, with every field filled in.

Itemized tuition bills and receipts are not on the list. The registrar’s class schedule is the enrollment proof the program uses.³

How to Send It In

Email all five items to scholarship@trails-end.com. Trail’s End does not accept faxed submissions, zipped attachments, or files over 10 MB. Scan or photograph each document as its own PDF or image and attach them individually to a single email. Either you or your local council can send the packet.¹⁵

When You’ll Actually Get Paid

Payouts aren’t processed on a rolling basis. Trail’s End issues them four times a year, on March 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15, and processing takes up to three weeks from the applicable date.¹

Timing matters. Email your packet on March 20 and your request waits until the June 15 cycle, roughly three months later. For fall tuition, aim for the September 15 cycle at the latest; submitting by June 15 builds in a cushion if Trail’s End flags anything with your documents.

Once approved, Trail’s End issues a check payable in your name and mails it directly to the school at the address on your form. The school credits it to your student account. The money never passes through your hands.¹

What the Scholarship Covers and the Tax Catch

Funds can be applied to tuition, books and materials, and room and board.² Room and board is unusual — a lot of scholarships exclude it — but there’s a tax consequence attached. Under IRS rules, scholarship money spent on tuition, required fees, and course-related books, supplies, and equipment is generally tax-free. Any portion applied to room and board counts as taxable income.⁶

If your school applies part of the award to housing or a meal plan, report that portion on Schedule 1, Line 8 of Form 1040. The school typically won’t issue a W-2 for it. Depending on the size, you may also need to make estimated tax payments.⁶ The reason Trail’s End asks for your full SSN on balances over $2,000 is tax reporting, so expect a record of the disbursement to exist.⁴

If you have a balance in the program, don’t sit on it. The hard age cap, the full-time enrollment rule, and the organization’s discretion to change terms all shrink the window.

1
Trail’s End. Trail’s End College Scholarship Payout Form
2
Alamo Area Council. Trail’s End Scholarship
3
Trail’s End. Trail’s End College Scholarship Program Terms and Conditions
4
Trail’s End Help Center. How to Redeem Your Trail’s End Scholarship Funds
5
Yosemite Area Council. Trail’s End College Scholarship Enrollment Form
6
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 421, Scholarships, Fellowship Grants, and Other Grants