I would think that this information does fall under FERPA, since it is information maintained by the educational institution that is directly related to the former student at the time that they were in attendance.
That being said, I would also think that this falls under the FERPA provision that allows the disclosure of information from the student record to school officials who have a legitimate educational interest in the information. One of the quirks of FERPA is that each institution has to publish its own definition of "school official" and "legitimate educational interest," but assuming that your institution has followed the model disclosures from the Family Policy Compliance Office at the U.S. Department of Education, Advancement staff would be school officials and they would have a legitimate educational interest if the access is required to perform their assigned duties.
With respect to the information being available to everyone in Advancement, that's true of all the information that Advancement accesses under this FERPA provision. We don't generally segregate, say, parent information, only to those Advancement staff who specifically use that information, and block it from other Advancement staff. With appropriate policies and non-disclosure training/documentation, there shouldn't be an issue.
Always good to review your institution's FERPA definitions and to run such matters past counsel, and John's suggestion that scholarship acceptance forms address this directly (along with related permissions like being able to disclose the recipient's name to the donor, etc.) is well taken, but I would be very surprised if there was any issue.
My US$0.02 worth; the usual disclaimers apply.
Good luck!
Alan
Alan S. Hejnal (he/him)
Data Quality Manager
