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“The geneses of foundations can be equally varied,” says Liz Stokes, chair of the Weston Education Foundation, which was created in 1994, and head of the Connecticut Consortium of Education Foundations, an organization like CCEF created to help Connecticut education foundations   succeed and share information and ideas. “In Weston, our foundation came about because of two issues,” she says. “The new superintendent of
schools and the board of education were concerned not only about reduced state funding, but also about the growing need for technology education and the costs associated with it.” Weston had no real business tax base, so when Stokes learned about education foundations she attended a conference in California at which Sweeney spoke.

She returned to Weston enthusiastic about what she had learned and recruited an initial planning committee. The committee, in turn, researched bylaws and mission statements, recruited other members who would make up the board of directors, and established the foundation’s tax exempt status.  Then the committee went about the business that is at the heart of all local education foundations – defining what role, exactly, the foundation will play in supporting and enhancing local education.

That role, says Stokes, will be unique to each community. Individual foundations and professional associations like the Connecticut Consortium can provide information and models for individuals and groups interested in starting a foundation. But ultimately, each local foundation must define its role in the community and in the local schools.

Weston’s foundation, Stokes notes, is built around three “pillars,” concerns that guide all of the foundation’s fund-raising and funding activities.
First, the foundation is concerned with teacher and curriculum development.  To address that interest, the foundation provides creativity grants of up to $1,000 to individual teachers in support of novel class projects. The foundation also provides expert-in-residence grants that help teachers to bring to the schools local experts on a wide range of subject areas. The experts come to the schools repeatedly to work in curriculum areas with teachers and students. Finally, the foundation provides collaborative grants that support teachers working with community resources, such as museums, on creative educational alternatives.

A second pillar of the Weston Foundation is technology, one of the concerns that led to creation of the foundation in the first place, and an
increasingly significant budget item for all schools. Early on, the Weston Foundation established a reputation in the community for getting things
done by tackling and successfully addressing two big technology-oriented projects – creation of a state-of-the-art media laboratory for the town’s high school and establishment of high speed Internet access for all three of the town’s schools.

The third pillar of the foundation is community education. “Our foundation is built around the belief that education is for everyone, not just for kids,” says Stokes. That belief arose from conversations with Weston residents as the foundation was being developed. By finding ways to
address the wider educational needs and interests of the community, Stokes says, the foundation has been more successful at creating
community-wide support for the foundation and its goals.

When, for instance, the foundation raised the funds to create high speed Internet access for the schools, it also insisted that the resource be
made available after school hours to teach Weston adults how to use the Internet. The foundation was also instrumental in establishing and
supporting a program called Weston Open Learning through which courses on such diverse subjects as landscaping, the new economy, computers and women artists are made available to the public.

Taught primarily by local experts, in the schools and other Weston public buildings, the Open Learning courses address a real need within the community while reinforcing the idea that public education is a shared resource and a shared responsibility.  Stokes is understandably proud of what the Weston Education Foundation has accomplished, and thinks of it as a model from which others can learn. But she’s also quick to assert, in her role as head of the Connecticut Consortium of Education Foundations, that local education foundations here come in many shapes and sizes. No one type fits all needs. Perhaps one of the ways in which education foundations differ most strikingly is the fund-raising strategies they employ.
 

The Business of Fund-raising

Since it is virtually impossible for foundations to meaningfully impact the quality of public education without financial resources, fund-raising is a
priority for all foundations. But, notes Stokes, not all foundations raise funds in the same manner. The Weston Foundation raises upwards of $100,000 annually and all of it is appropriated. The foundation begins the year with specific objectives in mind and seeks the funding necessary to address those goals...