After a year of quietly seeking private donations from both individuals and institutions, the Thea Foundation announced Wednesday that it is turning to the public to help reach its goal of establishing a $2 million scholarship endowment over the next year.
Paul Leopoulos, director of the foundation, addressed a crowd of about 20 inside the nonprofit scholarship foundation’s North Little Rock headquarters to announce the goal of raising the final $924,000 by July 2015.
“The campaign hasn’t exactly been a secret, but we wanted to make some progress before coming to the public,” Leopoulos said. “It’s always better that way, so that the public doesn’t feel like it has a mountain to climb.”
During his address, Leopoulos briefly highlighted more than 30 individual and institutional donors contributing more than $1 million to the endowment campaign so far.
Leopoulos’ son, Nick Leopoulos, assistant director for the foundation, said earlier that the endowment will create a permanent source of funding for about $80,000 in scholarships the foundation awards each year to Arkansas high school seniors, as well as individuals about to complete home schooling or GED programs.
Since its creation in 2001, the foundation has funded the scholarships through constant fundraising efforts, Nick Leopoulos said. He said that establishing an endowment, which will fund scholarships through the interest yield from an investment portfolio, will allow the foundation to both focus on new projects and increase the number of scholarships awarded this year.
“We’ve had to go out and raise those funds every year,” Nick Leopoulos said. “Anyone familiar with nonprofits knows that raising money for your programs is something apart from keeping your doors open. This [endowment] will help us focus on other areas — growth and development areas — without money being such an issue.”
The foundation awards scholarships in six areas: visual art, performing arts, creative writing, slam poetry, fashion design and film. Although the foundation awards 10 scholarships apiece for both the visual and performing arts categories, only two scholarships are awarded for each of the other categories.
Nick Leopoulos said the endowment would give the foundation the funds to provide more scholarships for each of the categories, as well as develop new K-12 arts education programs or strengthen existing programs.
Thea Foundation spokesman Stacey Bowers said the foundation is using a “peer-to-peer” fundraising model through which individuals can create their own donation campaigns on the foundation’s website.
“We started over a year ago,” Bowers said. “Moving into the public phase, we’re asking anyone, everyone, whatever the size of the organization, to give what they can.”
If the foundation reaches its $2 million endowment goal, the Windgate Charitable Foundation has pledged a $500,000 matching grant, she said. The Windgate grant would go into the foundation’s general operations fund, Bowers said, not the scholarship endowment.
Katie Emerson, a 2005 scholarship recipient for the performing arts, said the fund was instrumental in propelling her into her current performance career in New York City. After many childhood years pursuing music theater, the Jonesboro native attended the Broadway Theater Project in Tampa, Fla., where she encountered dozens of other highly talented high school students and began to doubt herself.
“It was the first time I’d been outside my comfort zone in a very large group of extremely talented kids, and it really overwhelmed me,” Emerson said. “I was very scared that I wasn’t going to be good enough, that I wasn’t going to be able to match all of these amazing other kids in the world who were trying to pursue theater.”
Emerson said that subsequently winning the foundation’s $4,000 first-place scholarship for performing arts gave her a boost to apply to several performing arts colleges she might have otherwise felt too shy to pursue, including her eventual alma mater, Elon University in North Carolina.
“Winning the scholarship helped me realize I can do this, I can follow my dreams, that someone believes in me enough to give me this opportunity,” Emerson said.
Readers can contact the Thea Foundation at (501) 379-9512 or www.theafoundation.org.