President Kevin Drumm and SUNY Broome students Andrew Nelson (far right) and Melinda Pitman (right) award the Peer Scholarship to Jimm McDaniels (left) at the 2015 scholarship awards reception.
Donate money to the Broome Community College Foundation, and your gift will likely end up directly helping students.
When it comes to the percentage of donations earmarked for student financial aid, SUNY Broome tops the list, according to a Feb. 7 MarketWatch report based on recently released data from the Council for Aid to Education (CAE).
“A donation to a community college stretches a dollar further than any other, and now we know that at SUNY Broome every one of those gifts goes even further than anywhere else,” said SUNY Broome President Kevin E. Drumm. “We are so fortunate in having such a dedicated foundation to make this possible for our students.”
Eighty-six percent of donations received by the Broome Community College Foundation in 2016 were designated to support student financial aid, ahead of Iowa’s Kirkwood Community College at nearly 80 percent, Maryland’s Frostburg State University at nearly 78 percent and Pennsylvania’s University of Pittsburgh-Bradford at 77 percent.
On the national front, charitable support for student financial aid has hovered around 16 percent of total support for the last decade, whether in terms of outright or endowed gifts, according to the CAE. For many institutions, the largest share of support goes to research, followed by academic divisions.
The BCC Foundation raised $2.6 million in 2016, including individual gifts, estate gifts and endowment earnings. Of that sum, 86 percent is restricted by the donors to support financial aid and scholarships.
“We’ve been fortunate as a community college that our donors have recognized student support is a priority and a great way to make a lasting impact,” said BCC Foundation Executive Director Cathy Williams.
The Foundation has a strong $30 million endowment that is designed to generate financial support into perpetuity, including student scholarships and other initiatives.
Approximately 85 percent of SUNY Broome students have some type of financial need. The college gives between 1,000 and 1,200 need-based grants-in-aid awards to students each year, as well as close to 400 merit scholarships. The latter includes the Presidential Honors Scholarship, which is supported by corporations in the community and gives the top 10 percent of local high school students a free ride to the college.
Another example is the Second Chance program, which provides assistance to students who are academically or financially disadvantaged and might not otherwise be able to attend college. For Second Chance Scholars, the higher their earned grade point average in college, the more money they end up receiving, Williams explained. Some recipients end up earning a 4.0 GPA each semester as a result of the incentive.
Donors can range from alumni who give $100 a year to those who donate $30,000 to endow a scholarship.
“All those annual gifts add up into a huge impact for us,” Williams said. “By itself, $100 may not seem like a lot, but collectively, $100 annual gift from a thousand people can make quite a difference.”
