50 scholarships. $2,000 each. Aviation and construction trades across all 24 Alabama community colleges. The Building Futures Scholarship Program needed a launch page that could communicate the program clearly and get prospective students to apply — with one cycle opening in May 2026.
Building Futures is a partnership between the Alabama Community College System and the Alabama RC&D Councils. The scholarship targets two specific career pathways — aviation and construction — where workforce demand is high and community college programs already have the infrastructure to deliver. The program funds are there. The application window is short. The site's job was to make sure the right students found it and knew what to do.
The brief was straightforward but high-stakes: launch page, one cycle, deadline-driven. No CMS needed, no backend, no user accounts — just a fast, clear, credible HTML page that could go live quickly and hold up under real traffic.
The Brief
The program details are specific: 50 total scholarships split between aviation and construction, $2,000 per award, available at any of ACCS's 24 member colleges. Applicants have to be currently enrolled or planning to enroll in an eligible program. Applications open May 1, 2026.
The page needed to answer four questions immediately:
- What is this scholarship?
- Who is eligible?
- How do I apply?
- When is the deadline?
Everything else was secondary. A student landing on this page from a social share or a college referral doesn't have time to dig through a wall of text. The structure had to front-load the essentials.
Structuring the Page
The page opens with a hero that states the program name, the award amount, and the two eligible pathways — no ambiguity. Below the fold, the content breaks into three clear sections: program overview, eligibility requirements, and the application process.
"One award amount. Two pathways. One application window. The page structure mirrors the program's own clarity — get in, find what you need, apply."
The two pathways — aviation and construction — get equal visual weight. Each has a short description of what programs qualify and what the scholarship covers. A quick-reference stats row anchors the core numbers: 50 scholarships, $2,000 each, 24 colleges, May 1 open date.
The eligibility section is a plain list, not a paragraph. Students need to scan it, not read it. The application process is three numbered steps with a direct CTA to the application form at the end of each section.
The ACCS and RC&D Partnership
Building Futures is jointly administered by ACCS and the Alabama RC&D Councils — a network of resource conservation and development organizations that operate across the state. The site needed to represent both entities without one overshadowing the other. Both logos appear in the header, the footer credits both organizations, and the program description explains the partnership in plain language.
This kind of dual-attribution setup matters for grant compliance and public trust. Students and institutions need to understand who's behind the scholarship and where the funding comes from. The page handles that without making it the centerpiece — the scholarship itself leads, the partnership context supports.
Built for a Fast Launch
The timeline from brief to live was short. No WordPress, no database, no CMS overhead — just a single HTML file with embedded CSS, optimized for fast load on any device. The page needed to be handed off to ACCS's web team for hosting on their existing infrastructure, so keeping the build simple was a feature, not a compromise.
The result loads in under a second on a standard connection, reads cleanly on mobile where a lot of student traffic comes from, and required no ongoing maintenance beyond updating the application link when the form goes live in May.