Scholarship Donations tax deductible for business?

Hello cen08!  Thanks for participating in our event today.  This is an interesting question.  Its so nice to see you are trying to give back to your community. While its impossible to give specific advice without a lot more information, I'll do my best to give you an idea. 

     Typically, its not going to be feasible to deduct a scholarship as a small business.  It is possible to set it up in such a way, but is likely going to cost enough to negate any tax savings. A corporation can create a scholarship that is administered by company-created private foundations.  In that instance, the scholarship could be deducted as a business expense if it is established as a program that meets the requirements for individual grants, and the procedures the foundation uses to award the scholarship are approved by the IRS in advance.  In most cases, you're better off giving the money to an established non-profit organization that already administers scholarships. 

     Unfortunately, tax deductions are only available for charitable contributions of money or property, not service. [And only to a qualified tax exempt organization]  However, there may still be some deductions depending on the project.  While you cannot deduct anything for your time or skill, you can deduct any associated real costs.  So for example, if a photographer does a charity photo shoot, he can't deduct the value he would normally charge for a photo shoot. However, he can deduct the cost of printing photos, shipping, mileage to the photoshoot, and other similar costs. 

Hope that helps! Best of luck.