2020 ANNUAL REPORT - MEL DOUGLASS FUND
Scholarships
- Joseph Cirilano won the $10,000 Mel Douglass Scholarship. Joe’s remarkable track record of volunteering includes leadership roles in seven different week-long community service projects outside of western Pennsylvania. Joe is now a freshman at Penn State University.
- Oyinkansola Adebajo, Emma Cahill, Mark Goggin, twins Bridget and Claire Hughes, Tanner Maue, Christopher Samek, and Olivia Zelinsky each earned a $1,000 honorable mention scholarship.
- Over the fund’s 13 year history, your contributions have supported 71 Edgewood students (13 Mel Douglass Scholarship winners plus 58 honorable mention winners) who enrolled in 39 colleges and universities located in 13 states and Washington DC. Our 71 winners volunteered a combined total of over 32,000 hours of community service as high school students.
- The 2020 total of 113 donors and the associated donations both represent new highs for the Fund. Thanks to all of you, the Fund enjoyed its thirteenth consecutive year of financial growth.
- Over 200 individuals, families, or organizations have contributed to the Fund since our inception in 2008. We are proud to celebrate all who have honored Mel. Our 2018, 2019 and 2020 donors are listed on the back of this page and donors from 2008 through 2017 are displayed on our website.
- The Mel Douglass Memorial Golf event on August 15th drew 111 players and 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 sensational day, guys! COVID permitting, our 2021 golf event will take place on August 14th, with our annual Donor Recognition Party the night before. Please save those dates and plan to make it a weekend…more details to follow in a few months!
- 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 tax filings, web design and maintenance, graphics, printing, and postage.
- Like every organization in 2020, we took health and safety measures during the pandemic. One of those steps, unfortunately, was to cancel our annual Donor Recognition Party. We are eager to resume that fun event this year if the virus permits. We also took precautions to safely conduct the Mel Douglass Memorial Golf event in August. We will do our best to operate safely this year as well.
- 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 2020:
- 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 thirteenth consecutive year.
