USA Funds Offers New Online Tool for Financial-Aid Professionals
Submitted by Arnold Trejo, Sandy Holt & John Bautista

USA Funds® has released a new online tool that links financial aid professionals to the people and resources they need to deliver excellent service to students and their parents. USA Funds Connection® offers an online gateway to products and services, information resources and personal productivity tools for the financial aid office.

One of the time-saving features of USA Funds Connection permits users to sign on once and access the following key loan-delivery and support services without having to sign on to each service separately:

• OpenNet, an online loan-delivery platform.
• Meteor, a source of aggregated, student-specific loan data.
• USA Funds Stafford Loan Guide, USA Funds’ new online Stafford-loan entrance-counseling service.
• USA Funds University Online Learning Site, which offers access to online training and webcasts, as well as information and registration for workshops and other training opportunities.

Additional resources available through USA Funds Connection include the following items:

• Workshops and training, which offers a list of training programs for which a user has registered, as well as other available professional-development opportunities.
• Contacts, which permits users to develop a personal address book of key contacts and to share those contacts with other campus users. A school’s key contacts for service from USA Funds also are listed.
• Tasks, which permits administrators to organize and track tasks for the USA Funds Connection users on their campus.

USA Funds Connection also links users to the latest information about student-aid administration, policies and regulations. The Web portal provides access to resources for enhancing campus debt-management programs and permits users to easily and conveniently order publications and forms online.

For more information, visit www.usafunds.org/financial_aid/usa_funds_connection.htm on the USA Funds Web site.