At a few open houses over the last two years, people pass by the booth and ask, “Are you the scholarship people?”  A humble and shy reply of, “Yes, we offer scholarships” comes out.

While the simple back and forth is 100% accurate, in fact we do provide scholarships, there is so much more to the foundation to consider.  But to get to now, we take a step back to 2006.

In April 2006, the foundation was established with a primary objective of supporting the educational mission of our schools.  The means to do this includes developing alternative sources of income to support learning while strengthening the partnership between the school and community.

Since incepted the foundation (EPSF) has been a source for student scholarships and creative instructional grants.  In the first three years, EPSF provided 49 scholarships to the seniors.  Teachers have also been awarded grant funds in order to better provide unique instructional opportunities for students.  We celebrate the generosity of our community and continually focus on the ultimate goal, “Providing post-secondary assistance to all graduating seniors of Edwardsburg High School.”

As a board consisting of parents, grandparents, and community members, we sit and focus energy on how to add to our funds in order to reach our goal of providing post-secondary funds to every graduating senior.  Most of our funding comes from direct community support.  Gracious donations from the community for our events is what rely on.  Every donation counts no matter large or small.  We have annual events like a dance, hall of fame dinner, and of course the Run Eddie Run 5K.  

In the spring, we open our online submissions for students.  The EPSF along provides twenty, $1000 scholarships.  We are also honored to award other community funded scholarships like the Keonig Medical Scholarship, Keith Kirkdorfer Memorial Scholarship, and the Smith, Hojara and Lauricella Endowment.  You can learn about each of these and others via this link. 

 EPSF also is honored to award grant funds to school staff.  In 2024 we were able to provide funds for ukulele’s in music class, helping to fund playground equipment at the intermediate school, and even more.  

Over time it is important for us to recognize the amazing and generous community we depend on.  The following graphs show our growth over the years.  As more funds come in, more can go out.  We maintain investment accounts with local advisors who help make our funds safely grow.  Again, as these funds grow, the EPSF can do more for students.  

Asking for money can be difficult for most people.  For some, however, they simply donate without thinking beyond the benefits their donations provide.  An example of this is the ability to donate on a regular basis by taking a small deduction from your payroll.  Almost 10% of our regular donation income is from staff donating to EPSF via their payroll deduction.

That’s our brief introduction.  In the coming weeks and forward we intend to layout each of the scholarships including the history, donors, and much more.  Thank you for reading!