The Value of Our Scholarship Program
From $500 to $120,000
From 2005 to 2020, 117 scholarships have been awarded for a total dollar amount of almost $120,000. That’s a lot of money and a lot of students! I’ll explain below how the actual value of our investments is much greater than $120,000.
2005-2021
2005 Through donations from classmates, the first TWO scholarships are awarded.
2006-2010 More money was obtained and an additional annual scholarship was added for a total of THREE.
2011 The Class of 1981 collected money from their 30th Reunion and awarded two scholarships. Paula Gabrish endowed TWO scholarships and Hoby and Anita Horn endowed ONE which enabled us to award THREE additional scholarships putting us up to SIX annually.
2012 With our OCCF investments, we were able to add TWO more MHSAA scholarships which allowed us to award a total of SEVEN.
2013—2016 We remained steady through this time and awarded SEVEN scholarships each year.
2017-2018 And then we got real LUCKY in 2017. The Class of 1986 decided to award a scholarship in honor of their classmate, Brent Gilson and repeated in 2018. Additionally, two alumnae donated enough for an additional scholarship each year AND we were able to award one additional MHSAA scholarship each year.
2019-2020 We were fortunate enough to award a Brent Gilson scholarship each year, thanks to the generosity of the class of ‘86. Plus additional MHSAA scholarships and due to individual donations we awarded four additional scholarships in 2020. One of those was awarded to a cross country athlete in memory of the students we lost in February 2020.
The Help of Others
As you can see above, there are many years when we have received and continue to receive donations from individuals and individual MHS classes to award additional scholarships. We are extremely grateful to the classes of 1981 and 1986 for their commitment to MHS students. If your class is interested, we are more than welcome to help you with this!
Oklahoma City Community Foundation
The eight annual scholarships we award are endowed through the Oklahoma City Community Foundation (OCCF). Endowment means a minimum amount is required to open a fund then OCCF invests that money for us. These funds grow annually allowing us to award more scholarships along the way. Currently, we are focused on endowing a scholarship to permanently honor our cross country students - Rachel, Yuridia, and Kolby. Please consider helping us with this particular scholarship fund or ANY that impacts you. These kids are our future and there sure are a lot of good ones who can use your support!
Thank you for reading post two of four about our scholarships. The third post lets you know how we go about selecting scholarship recipients from a field of excellent candidates!
