2021 ANNUAL REPORT - MEL DOUGLASS FUND

Scholarships
  • Noah Strauss won the $10,000 Mel Douglass Scholarship.  Fostering over 350 cats in volunteer service to several animal shelters and rescue organizations is among Noah’s numerous community service accomplishments.  Noah is now a freshman at Bucknell University.
  • Libby Alfieri, Jon Apessos, Benjamin Berman, Walker Edwards, Dylan Ilov, Ricki Lawson, and Lina Sora each earned $1,500 honorable mention scholarships. 
  • Over the fund’s 14 year history, your contributions have supported 79 Edgewood students (14 Mel Douglass Scholarship winners plus 65 honorable mention winners) who enrolled in 46 colleges and universities located in 16 states and Washington DC.  Our 79 winners logged a combined total of over 32,000 hours of volunteer community service before graduating from high school.    
 
Contributions
  • The total of 130 donors represents a single year high for the Fund.  Thanks to all of you, the Fund enjoyed its fourteenth consecutive year of financial growth.      
  • Over 200 individuals, families, or organizations have contributed to the Fund since our inception in 2008.  We are extremely proud to recognize and celebrate all who have honored Mel with donations.  Our donors from 2018 through 2021 are listed on the back of this page.  All of our donors and scholarship winners since 2008 are displayed on our website.
  • The Mel Douglass Memorial Golf event on August 14th drew 104 players and was another successful fundraiser and a fantastic day of fellowship.  As always, Gregg Bowers and Nick Kefalos deserve thanks for their tremendous leadership of this event.  Thanks again for a sensational day, guys!  Our 2022 golf event will take place on August 13th at Murrysville Golf Club.  Also, our Board of Directors hopes to thank you in person, pandemic permitting, by hosting a Donor Recognition Party the night before.  Please save those dates and 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 members.  These expenses include tax filings, donor communications, web design and maintenance, graphics, printing, and postage.
 
Operations
  • Our Board voted to award two $10,000 Mel Douglass Scholarships each year rather than one starting in 2022.  We will continue to award $1,500 honorable mention scholarships as appropriate.  Your support enabled this step, which immediately increases our impact in Edgewood.  Thank you!
  • We took precautions at our in-person events to seek to operate safely as the pandemic evolved.         
  • As always, we aligned 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.  Once again we balanced short-term and long-term financial objectives:
    • Short-term:  We financially supported all of the scholarships awarded and met all of our other financial, legal, and administrative obligations to operate the fund.
    • Long-term:  We set aside a portion of your contributions to build our endowment.  Thanks to you, our endowment balance grew for the fourteenth consecutive year.