2019 ANNUAL REPORT - MEL DOUGLASS FUND

Scholarships
  • Abbey Lehrian won the $10,000 Mel Douglass Scholarship.  Abbey’s impressive track record of volunteering has positively impacted communities ranging from Edgewood to New York City.  Abbey is now a freshman at Case Western Reserve University.
  • Eli Alfieri, Christina Caulkins, Henry Edwards, Jeremiah Gramby, Alexei Hooks, and Taylor Ilov earned $1,000 honorable mention scholarships.
  • Over the fund’s twelve year history, your contributions have supported 62 Edgewood students (twelve Mel Douglass Scholarship winners plus fifty honorable mention winners) who enrolled in 35 colleges and universities located in thirteen states and Washington DC.

Contributions
  • The 103 donors represented our highest number ever.  In addition, the corresponding contributions led the Mel Douglass Fund to its twelfth straight year of financial growth.
  • Our donor base continues to be a healthy blend of long time and newer contributors.  Since our inception in 2008, almost 200 individuals, families, or organizations have contributed.  We are proud to celebrate all who have honored Mel.  Our 2018 and 2019 donors are listed on the back of this page and donors from 2008 through 2017 are displayed on our website (meldouglassfund.org).
  • The Mel Douglass Memorial Golf event on August 3rd was another successful fundraiser and a fantastic day of fellowship.  As always, Gregg Bowers and Nick Kefalos deserve recognition and thanks for their tremendous leadership of this event.  Thanks again for a terrific day, guys!  Our 2020 golf event will take place on August 15th with our annual Donor Recognition Party the night before.   Please save those dates and plan to make it a weekend…more information to follow!
  • As always, 100% of your contributions were directed to current or future scholarships.  All expenses to operate the fund are personally paid by our Board of Directors.  These expenses include the Donor Recognition Party, tax filings, web design and maintenance, graphics, printing, and postage.

Operations
  • We took additional steps to update our website.  One area of focus was to continue to make our processes more transparent to our scholarship candidates and their families, our donors, and all other stakeholders.  An example is that our Board’s strategy for periodically adjusting the Mel Douglass Scholarship amounts to keep pace with rising college costs is now described on our site.     
  • We continued to align all of our activities to build an endowment that is self-sustaining in perpetuity to make sure Mel’s legacy endures and continues to benefit young people in Edgewood.  We balanced short-term and long-term financial objectives again in 2019:
    • Short-term:  We financially supported all of the scholarships awarded and met all of our other obligations to operate the fund.
    • Long-term:  We set aside a portion of your contributions to continue building our endowment.  Thanks to your generosity, our endowment balance grew for the twelfth consecutive year.