2024 Annual Report - Mel Douglass Fund
Scholarships
- We awarded two $10,000 Mel Douglass Scholarships. The winners were Christian Gleba, now at Grove City College, and Sophia Marzka, now at the University of Pittsburgh.
- Moyo Adebajo, Anderson Beck, Aidan Rockovich, and Owen Teufel each earned $1,500 honorable mention scholarships.
- Over the fund’s 17-year history, your contributions have now supported 101 Edgewood students (20 Mel Douglass Scholarship winners plus 81 honorable mention winners) who enrolled in 55 colleges and universities located in 19 states and Washington DC. Our 101 winners volunteered a combined total of over 45,200 hours of community service in numerous roles before graduating from high school.
- 128 of you contributed to the Fund, which assured our seventeenth consecutive year of financial success and positioned us well for 2025 and beyond.
- Over 240 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 2024 are listed on the back of this page. All of our donors and scholarship winners since our start in 2008 are displayed on our website (meldouglassfund.org).
- The Mel Douglass Memorial golf event on August 10th drew 111 players and was our most successful fundraiser ever. Gregg Bowers and Nick Kefalos always deserve recognition for their tremendous leadership of this event. Thanks for a sensational day, guys! Our 2025 golf event will take place on August 9th at Manor Valley Golf Course. Also, our Board of Directors would like to thank you in person by again hosting our annual Donor Appreciation Party the night before at Grand View Golf Club. Please save those two dates and plan to make it a weekend…more details 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 members. These expenses include our Donor Appreciation Party, tax filings, student and donor communications, website design and updates, graphics, printing, and postage.
- We hosted our Donor Appreciation Party once again. The August 9th event at Grand View Golf Club was attended by approximately 75 donors and scholarship recipients.
- For the first time, we selected and honored a donor who enjoyed a strong connection with Mel. We were delighted to celebrate Joe Marasti, well known to many as our teacher and coach at Edgewood High School, as our inaugural awardee. Congratulations again, Joe!! We plan to continue to recognize a “Donor of the Year” annually at our donor party.
- As always, we aligned our activities to nurture 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 sustain our endowment. Thanks to you, our endowment remains healthy.
