Scholarship

The Hoffman Agency HBCU Scholarship

Opening Doors and Increasing Diversity in the Communications Industry.

Applications for 2024 scholarship now open for students pursuing a communications degree.

Please direct questions to [email protected]

Scholarship Details

The Hoffman Agency Scholarship will cover tuition and fees for a California Community College student who transfers to attending an HBCU to study communications.

The scholarship will cover the recipient’s junior and senior year at an HBCU, two years.

We established a non-profit foundation in California as the legal entity to house the scholarship, the LPJ Foundation (entity #5261937).

The Backstory Behind the Scholarship

The Hoffman Agency, a global communications consultancy, celebrated its 35^th anniversary last year.

Between the pandemic and racial justice coming to the fore in 2020, we saw an opportunity to reinvent the Agency and its approach to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Previously, our philosophy was to let nature take its course. CEO Lou Hoffman himself made the point with the staff that the Agency had always hired the best candidate regardless of race, religion, age or gender. The staff responded with a “that’s not enough,” setting the course for Lou, the leadership team and the entire staff on a journey to rethink DEI. One word served — and continues to serve — as our North Star: “purposeful.”

Fast forwarding to today, we are a more diverse organization with a greater understanding of what it means to be diverse, equitable and inclusive.

This journey got us thinking, “Is there a way we could advance diversity across the overall communications profession?” As a company of modest size — roughly 260 employees across the globe — could we make difference?

We landed on a resounding “Yes!”

We view the 2.4M students attending California Community Colleges, the vast majority coming from diverse backgrounds, as an untapped talent pool. The challenge is the typical student doesn’t even know a career in communications exist much less the creativity, intellectual challenges and financial rewards from such a career.

Did you?

That’s what this scholarship is all about.

Yes, we will reward a deserving student from a California Community College attending a HBCU to study communications with a scholarship.

But we’re also striving to use the scholarship as a platform to advocate and educate for what awaits those who pursue a career in communications.

The Selection Process and Requirements

We are looking to reward a California Communicate College student transferring to an HBCU who:

Cares about others and their surrounding community
Values education
Shows a passion for language and communications.

1. 1. Applicants must be currently enrolled at a California Community College during the 2023-2024 academic year.
  2. Applicants must provide a letter of acceptance from one of the 39 HBCU partners that participate in the California Community College Guarantee to Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
  3. Applicants must major in a discipline that fall under the communications umbrella at their attending HBCU.
  4. Applicants must complete the application process by March 15, 2024.
  5. The Selection Council reviews the applications and identifies the top candidates in March.
  6. Heather and Lou Hoffman interview three candidates and announce the scholarship recipient in April.

If you have any questions, reach out to us at [email protected]

Apply for the Scholarship

The Selection Council will grade each applicant based on a 50-point system:

Grades: 10 points
Essay questions: 40 points

Apply

(This scholarship is only for students intending to pursue a communications degree at a HBCU.)

The Selection Council

Helen Young, Assistant Project Director at California Community College Chancellor’s Office

Jasmin Hurling Spears, Enrollment Management Counselor, Bowie State University

Danisha Williams, Ed.D, Director of Admissions, Lincoln University

Heather Hoffman, co-founder, the Hoffman Agency

Lou Hoffman, co-founder, The Hoffman Agency

What exactly is communications? How is it different from public relations?

Let’s start with public relations.

It used to be that PR largely consisted of writing news releases and pitching these announcements and other stories to journalists. In short, the profession focused on “earned media.”

The arrival of the internet forever changed the trajectory of public relations by offering other channels to reach the target audience. As the work of PR professionals started to incorporate social media, websites and microsites — channels referred to as “owned media” — as well as “paid media,” the broader term of “communications” better describes the work.

If we look at today’s communications function through the lens of content, it touches every type of content imaginable — with the exception of advertising — that helps an organization tell its story to the outside world.

Watch HBCU graduates share their career journeys in the communications field in this recording of our webinar!

About The Hoffman Agency

Like so many companies born in Silicon Valley, we believe there’s a better way.

We believed this going back to the start of the Agency in 1987. We believe it today — a mentality that continually pushes us to evolve our offering and what it means to be a communications consultancy.

Defining communications broadly to include digital, content marketing, thought leadership as well as traditional PR, The Hoffman Agency helps its clients elevate their public profiles. With a heritage in the technology sector, the firm’s work today cuts across a range of industries.

For clients with global needs, the company operates in Asia Pacific, Europe and the United States.

While campaigns vary by client and industry, all share one theme: the creation of content that reflects the tenets of storytelling. This means developing narratives that prompt journalists to write and target audiences to read — a far cry from the “corporate speak” that satisfies internal stakeholders.

Even on the operations side, The Hoffman Agency walks to a different drummer. Eschewing the traditional focus on the financial side — measuring account people based their “billability” — the firm adheres to the belief that if you deliver great work to the client, financial performance will follow (as opposed to the numbers being the lead pin).

Named Global Tech Agency of the Year by PRovoke Media in 2021, the Agency supports clients ranging from Zoom (workplace platform) to Nokia (telecom infrastructure) to TSMC (semiconductors) to startups.