Amazing, Outstanding, Awesome, Unbelievable, Incredible, Educational, Crazy, Helpful, Busy, and WOW are all very fitting words to describe Arkansas’s first ever College Goal Sunday event held on February 18, 2007. Arkansas’s Year One Goal was to have at least 1000 people attend College Goal Sunday at 28 sites across the state. As it turned out, Arkansas had 2,263 attendees, at least 1,161 FAFSA filers and 625 College Goal Sunday volunteers! Marcia Weston, NASFAA’s Director of College Goal Sunday Operations, confirmed that Arkansas’s College Goal Sunday program was the largest first-year College Goal Sunday implementation in the nation, hosting 30 sites throughout Arkansas.

The Arkansas Department of Higher Education received a three-year grant, totaling $150,000, from Lumina Foundation for Education to implement the College Goal Sunday program. Lumina Foundation for Education is an Indianapolis-based private foundation dedicated to expanding access and success in education beyond high school. Arkansas’s College Goal Sunday Program is coordinated through a joint partnership between the Arkansas Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators and the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.

“Thank You” are two simple words that are just not strong enough to convey how much I appreciate AASFAA’s commitment to College Goal Sunday, and the association’s commitment to the hundreds of Arkansas families who benefited from our collective work on College Goal Sunday. I have no doubt WE MADE A DIFFERENCE for the Arkansas families who attended College Goal Sunday. AASFAA has now established a strong foundation for the Arkansas College Goal Sunday Program, and looks forward to the opportunity to assist an even greater number of Arkansas families with completing the FAFSA in 2008.

More information about Arkansas’s College Goal Sunday Program can be found at www.arcollegegoalsunday.org, which is also translated in Spanish.

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