Sallie Mae is committed to mission-aligned initiatives supporting our customers, communities, team members, and the environment. We prioritize focus areas that are relevant to our unique mission and strategic priorities—and those that create the most opportunity for measurable impact.
To guide our approach, we organize our efforts into three pillars, drawing inspiration from academia:
Our Majors represent our primary areas of impact—those that create value and societal benefits by expanding access to higher education, advocating for affordability, and helping more students complete their education.
Our Minors reflect the foundational elements and efforts that result in responsible business.
Our Core Requirements encompass the management systems and governance structures we have in place to manage risk, ensure privacy and data protection, and comply with regulatory requirements and best practices.
Sallie Mae is more than a leader in private student lending, we’re an education solutions company committed to providing innovative products, tools, and resources to help students and families make informed, confident decisions about their higher education journey.
Our scholarship search is free, easy to use, and connects students with a wide variety of scholarships to help make higher education more accessible and affordable.
We offer free tools and resources to all students and families to help them make informed decisions about planning and paying for college. Our goal is to do our part in helping remove barriers to higher education, particularly for those who need the most support.
As a recognized thought leader, our reports provide insight into how American students and families approach higher education and finances—including How America Pays for College, How America Completes College, How America Succeeds After College, and more.
Through the philanthropic investments of The Sallie Mae Fund, we unlock the potential of higher education and give back to the communities where we live, work, and serve.
In 2023, Sallie Mae committed a $1 million research endowment to Delaware State University to fund a three-year "Persistence and Completion Pilot Program" to help identify barriers to college completion.
The program aims to understand and overcome obstacles to degree completion, help more students complete their degree, and develop policy recommendations and best practices that can be deployed at institutions nationwide.
Through our multi-year partnership with the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, The Sallie Mae Fund’s Bridging the Dream Scholarship Program has awarded approximately $4 million in scholarships to more than 1,100 students—offering opportunities to high school seniors, graduate students, and those facing unexpected financial circumstances. Learn more about the Bridging the Dream Scholarship Program.
We support mission-aligned organizations at both national and local levels, with a particular focus on programs that remove barriers and help more students access and complete higher education.
We continue to monitor our environmental impact by identifying opportunities to reduce our energy consumption and our emissions and remain focused on exploring innovative solutions to further reduce waste and promote circularity in our operations. For more information, please see our latest Impact Report.
