From the Nominator

The Harper College Educational Foundation engaged in a strategic planning process in 2020, which resulted in the decision to embark on a multi-year fundraising campaign to grow the endowment and expand access to education for all students in our community. With an original goal of $6 million, the Harper College Educational Foundation, a community college located in the northwest suburbs of Chicago, engaged in a feasibility study in the spring of 2021 to gather information from the community. Due to COVID, meetings were held remotely, providing a unique challenge to engage and collect information from donors.   

Near the end of the feasibility study, Harper College received notification of an $18 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. This changed everything. Using the momentum from this historic gift—the largest received by the institution—the campaign goal increased to raising $30 million by June 30, 2024. Campaign materials were adjusted to reflect the honor of receiving a MacKenzie Scott gift and focused on the message of increasing access to students in our community through an affordable college education.  

The campaign publicly launched on February 22, 2022 with a virtual event and a new foundation website. The Inspire Scholarship Campaign goals are to build a better tomorrow through: 

1) Endowed scholarships 
2) Planned gifts 
3) Transfer scholarships  

As of February 28, 2023, the campaign is 98.2% to goal. Forty-five new scholarships have been created (four are transfer) and a $3 million planned gift—the largest in our history—was secured.

From the Judges

This was a very good campaign, but the fact that they pivoted so well and to the effect that they did—in the teeth of COVID—is amazing. We liked how the foundation captured data on the demographics and academic outcomes of their scholarship recipients over the past six years to share these facts with donors. Gathering this data can be replicated by other colleges for scholarship campaigns. Strong outcomes!