Virginia Commonwealth University has one. So do the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia. St. Catherine’s, St. Christopher’s and Collegiate schools have one each. Harvard University has one big enough to buy 5,000 large private islands in the Caribbean.

What they all have in common is an endowment fund, which is “a collection of financial assets that a school can periodically pull from to cover an array of costs while intentionally growing funds over time,” according to U.S. News & World Report.

Endowment funds are financial staples for public and private colleges and private preparatory schools but are rarely used in funding public school systems. That’s about to change in Richmond, where two entrepreneurs, Michael Bor and Chris Bossola, have created The Endowment Project, a startup with the lofty goal “to eventually create a $65 million endowment for every public high school in the country,” Bor says.

Hitting that ambitious mark will take time, Bor admits, but The Endowment Project is already successful after launching in May 2023 with 12 pilot projects in Richmond-area schools.

The first high school, Douglas S. Freeman, has raised “almost $100,000 so far,” Bor says. The school used the funds to award two first-generation college scholarships, refurbish a concession stand and buy furniture for a flex learning room. “We have received some innovative, flexible furniture,” says Douglas S. Freeman Principal John Marshall. “We are transforming some common space inside the building into a 21st-century learning area.”

The goal for 2024, Bor says, “is to significantly expand and to ultimately include all of Virginia as our first test state. Education is the second-largest destination for philanthropy behind religion, but it all goes to colleges and private schools. Not many people currently give to public high schools.”

Inspiration
While public school endowments are rare, there are a few successful programs. Boston Latin School in Massachusetts, the country’s oldest school and largest of the Boston Public School System, has a $75 million endowment (see story below). The money is raised through the Boston Latin School Association, which is independent from the school. In 2018, Peter Kelly, president and CEO of the BLSA, led the Boston Latin School Prima Perpetua Campaign to $54 million, the largest known campaign on behalf of a single public school in U.S. history.

“It has really developed over the last 30 years,” Kelly says. “There was an ascendence of the notion of private philanthropy supporting public good.”

“It’s a really interesting idea,” Marshall says. “This model works for higher ed, so I think there is a model for that. I support anything that gives more funds to public education. There are a lot of public schools, and a lot of need in our schools, so anybody who is working to support public schools is someone I’m excited about.”

Bor, a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, says his private school had a $1.5 billion endowment. “Teachers were supported. International programs were offered. It was a fantastic place.”

In 2021, when Bor and his then business partner Will Boland took their startup, CarLotz, public, Bor got a phone call from his old prep school seeking a donation. Boland, who went to Douglas S. Freeman, got no such call. “That started a conversation around fundraising in high schools and how it just doesn’t exist in the public system as it does in the private system,” Bor says. “I realized that there were no gifts because there was no infrastructure for it, no donor platform, no 501(c)(3), no annual report on what happened with your gift and what impact it made. We need to start by building the infrastructure to enable and encourage that level of giving.”

Two years later, Bor resigned from CarLotz and started The Endowment Project LLC with Chris Bossola, a fellow entrepreneur and founder of Need Supply Co., to build the infrastructure to make charitable giving to public high schools easy and focused while ensuring accountability.

Infrastructure
Since then, The Endowment Project has built the technological infrastructure to allow individual schools to set up their own funds, created a database of prospective donors, templated marketing campaigns and established an accountable and transparent way to disburse the funds.

“There is no real setting up that the school has to do,” Bor says. “Everything we are doing is — I don’t want to say independent of the school because we do need them to tell us how to spend the money — but we don’t really ask anything of the school, and that’s key for this model. We are not adding work to the principal or the administration, we don’t have a contract with the schools. We view our customer as the alumni and the school as the beneficiary.”

He continues, “We are building a database of where everyone went to high school and how to reach them today. It’s relatively difficult and expensive technology. We are also building a giving platform so when alumni find out about what we are doing, they are able to give online [and] with Apple Pay or Google Pay.”

A typical public high school has 400 graduates each year, Bor says. “Most people live about 60 years on average after they graduate, so there are about 24,000 graduates per school. Our systems today can probably figure out a third of those immediately, just through technology. We hope to get to half or more over time.”

Douglas Freeman has “a proud, supportive Freeman community and alumni, and strong alumni base,” Marshall says. “There are almost 70 years of history here. There are a lot of folks who have a lot of interest in making sure we continue a tradition that is really rich and impactful for a lot of years. We have an active [parent-teacher-student association], a very active, wonderful athletic booster program, and several other booster programs. If you have a student here, you might be part of our PTSA. If you have student athlete here, you might be part of our booster program.

The Endowment Project “is for trying to reach those alumni who live outside of the area, like California, or don’t have school-age kids but are still willing to give back,” he continues. “We have a lot of alumni out there, a lot of successful folks that [The Endowment Project] thought they could tap into to help support the school as it is now. Ultimately [The Endowment Project] is a separate organization who are making some donations to this school on behalf of the alumni who have donated to them. They were working with a group we weren’t readily accessing.”