The National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students (NSSFNS, Norman grantee 1950–1975) was founded in 1947 by Felice Nierenberg Schwartz, a Smith College graduate who had briefly worked for the NAACP and was determined to address the near-total exclusion of Black students from predominantly white colleges and universities. As a Jewish woman who had faced discrimination herself, Schwartz empathized deeply with Black students navigating institutions that had long shut their doors to them. NSSFNS was the first talent identification organization in the United States to identify and place Black students in predominantly white boarding schools and colleges — providing not only scholarship support, but counseling and guidance services to help students succeed once they arrived.

In 1962, NSSFNS phased out boarding school referrals to focus exclusively on higher education, eventually serving approximately 40,000 students a year by the 1970s. The organization was instrumental in developing A Better Chance, which continues today to place talented students of color in high-achieving schools across the country. Over 25 years, Norman provided $36,600 in grants to NSSFNS — a demonstration of the early and sustained support that organizations need to fulfill their missions.