We have an ambitious goal to help 750,000 students complete their education -- whether it's a certification, a two-year degree or a four-year degree -- by 2025 with a manageable level of debt.

We are employing four major strategies to ensure our goals. (1) Becoming a leader of the national education conversation by demonstrating the impact of private and community scholarships. (2) Harnessing the power of relationships and strategic alliances to ensure students are prepared to choose, enroll in and succeed in college on all levels. (3) Increasing national recognition of our organization and its affiliates. (4) Diversifying and maximizing our fundraising efforts to ensure sustainable scholarship growth.

Our staff, capital investments and growth are all focused on achieving our mission goal of helping 750,000 students between 2011 and 2025. We have created a Programs and Policy department that works in Washington, connecting our expertise and grassroots efforts to the national conversation on education.

Our significant technology investments over the past several years have focused on two areas: streamlining scholarship management for clients and volunteers, and establishing a robust CRM system for stakeholders. Thanks to the former efforts, our 500 volunteer-driven affiliates now all have branded websites and online scholarship management -- and all of our staff and stakeholders can raise funds and award scholarships more efficiently than ever before.

Each of our four strategies comes with a built-in indicator of progress. For (1), we will looking at the establishment of baseline metrics and the growth of our role in national discussions. For (2), we are looking to deepen existing partnerships and create new and ongoing ones. For (3), we are monitoring a wide variety of awareness metrics both online and off, ranging from social-media engagement to media appearances. And for (4), we will be measuring both revenue growth and donor and client retention consistently.

For our big goal, we need to effectively measure completion rates of our recipients; our technology improvements will help us do so, and that will ultimately be the most telling indicator.

In addition to the $202 million in scholarships we awarded last year, important progress has been made on all areas of our strategic plan. Through the introduction of the Dream Award -- a scholarship given to current college students, providing funds for their second year and beyond -- we have created a flagship national program that focuses not on getting into college, but on completing a degree. We have reinforced this focus by providing matching grants for renewable scholarships to our volunteer affiliates, and by encouraging corporate scholarship sponsors to fund renewable, completion-focused awards.

The Dream Award -- whose recipients were announced live on national TV by award supporter Katie Couric -- also helped us diversify fundraising and attain more brand recognition. And our association with Higher Ed Not Debt, a bipartisan higher-ed advocacy group, has raised our profile in Washington and led to new partnership avenues.

We continue to strive to help students complete school, and to successfully measure completion rates among our scholarship recipients. As we work toward our large goal, this is where we'll be focusing ongoing efforts.