We think so! Certainly, not everyone had a great high school experience but we have found through our independent discussions with hundreds of public high school graduates that they either: i) loved their experience and would undoubtedly give money if it was a possibility, ii) didn’t love the high-school experience but did feel strongly about a specific teacher or program and would support specific pieces of the high-school experience for others, iii) hated their high-school experience but would be willing to give, so that future students have a better high school experience, and iv) hated the experience and would never give money. We have also learned through conversations with those targeted by their independent private schools or colleges and universities that they also fall into these buckets. In fact, many alumni of well-endowed private schools have a bias against giving because they perceive that the institution does not need the money. We think that public high school alumni are just as likely to donate in similar percentages and dollars as private high school, college, and university alumni if asked.

Local education foundations are important partners for school districts and do great work for their communities. They support the development of district-wide programs by aligning their fundraising with a district's long-term strategy. In our experience, many donors have an affinity for a specific school, and it's important for donors to have choices to support the schools and programs that are important to them. We believe more choices result in more donor support. We're all organized towards a common goal: to enhance the public school experience. We always seek ways to collaborate with our colleagues in the space to achieve this goal. After all, the amount of private funds available to support public schools is a fraction of what it could be, and there's lots of work for us all to do to solve this imbalance.

This is a critical challenge we face along with other institutions and companies. The Endowment Project starts with an equitable model: client schools are not required to provide any significant resources to launch with TEPF, there is no risk for the school. Therefore, we will bring all the resources of the most elite institutional development offices to all the schools with which we work. Some communities will have a higher ability to contribute to their respective foundations than others but The Endowment Project will work with community-wide education foundations, corporations, the community and other philanthropists in these cases to attempt to resolve inequity issues. Because of the philanthropic infrastructure that TEP intends to build, corporate and institutional givers will have direct access to schools with less resources to help alleviate potential inequities.

We think they're great! Many schools have a parent-teacher organization and/or a booster club. While these organizations do much good for the schools and communities they serve, in most cases they have limited resources to buildout enterprise level fundraising campaigns. We believe that the sophistication of The Endowment Project's processes, technology, and the development of alumni databases can help PTO's and Booster clubs achieve greater success - we believe we're all organized towards a unified goal: to enhance the high school experience and we plan to work together to achieve this goal.

It's only the beginning. We’ve decided to initially focus on public high schools, but we firmly believe that once we’ve established The Endowment Project Foundation as a successful model for building philanthropic infrastructure, raising significant assets, managing the capital, and deploying it in high-impact ways within America’s public high schools, we can expand the model to include the entire public school system and other community-based organizations that don’t currently have robust infrastructure or resources to raise and manage meaningful amounts of capital such as museums, religious institutions, and other sub-scale organizations that would benefit from stakeholder donations.

We don't believe so and have not seen that happen in practice. Distributions of the foundation's capital will be at discretion of each Funds' Advisors. Additionally, TEPF is an independent 501c3 organization and therefore the school district cannot rely on any distributions and therefore cannot build those distributions into their budget. In practice, where public-school specific foundations exist, we have not seen the availability of additional capital equate to reduced resources from the city or county.

Certainly some, but multiple studies indicate that individuals donate to charities for a variety of reasons. Most gifts are driven by the following six factors, altruism, peer pressure, trust, impact, belief in the mission, and recognition. A more cynical view is that donations are given to elite educational institutions for admittance. While this likely happens occasionally, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), it is rare. Even though studies indicate that people don’t donate for a personal ROI as it relates to public education, most donors are aware of the tangible benefits of supporting their local public schools because of the direct link to property values and the quality of a community’s educational resources.