At the end of last year, Inside Philanthropy ran an interesting piece http://www.insidephilanthropy.com/the-ask/2015/11/3/inside-the-fundraising-shop-of-a-top-public-school.html profiling Boston Latin School’s approach to fundraising. The story is worth reading because along with highlighting important information including the fact that since its founding in 1635 the school holds the recognition of being the oldest in the United States, the piece also includes some very useful advice on fundraising for schools of all types.
Boston Latin enjoys strong name recognition in part because its graduates have included history makers such as Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but also because admission remains an academically competitive process. Still, as Inside Philanthropy’s piece emphasizes, the fact that it is a public school still means that it “is subject to the vagaries of city funding.” One hundred and seventy-two years ago the school came up with a solution to its limited budget by creating an association, the Boston Latin School Association http://www.bls.org/, with the purpose of raising money for a library. Since then, BLSA’s scope has broadened to include funding for technology, athletics, arts and special curricular areas.
Reflecting on the success that BLSA has had over the years, Lorraine Driscoll Sousa, director of development and ’94, emphasized to Inside Philanthropy that individual giving is key. She explained:
“When we look at Latin School, we see a great sense of pride in where the school started off, what its role has been in history and what it continues to mean every day to the kids who are here. As an alum, we want you to give back the opportunities you had. We want you to invest in the kids now so that they look back in 20 or 40 years and realize that they had stood on the shoulders of someone else.”
Reflecting on the success that BLSA has had over the years, Lorraine Driscoll Sousa, director of development and ’94, emphasized to Inside Philanthropy that individual giving is key. She explained:
“When we look at Latin School, we see a great sense of pride in where the school started off, what its role has been in history and what it continues to mean every day to the kids who are here. As an alum, we want you to give back the opportunities you had. We want you to invest in the kids now so that they look back in 20 or 40 years and realize that they had stood on the shoulders of someone else.”