Securing Sustainable Tuition Assistance For the Boys Yet to Come

Endowing tuition assistance is the greatest priority of the Campaign for the Boys. Woodberry wants to ensure that all boys with the potential and will to succeed in a culture of intellectual thoroughness and moral integrity can come to Woodberry, regardless of their family’s financial circumstances. While the school has a generous tuition assistance program, each year there are qualified applicants — boys who would make Woodberry stronger and would be made better themselves — who we cannot admit because we have exhausted the tuition assistance budget.

At the Campaign’s outset, the board of trustees, and the school administration estimated that Woodberry needed to raise $80 million in endowed scholarships. These new scholarships would allow the school to grow the tuition assistance budget through the endowment and meet the needs of those boys who arecurrently turned away. 

As of April 2022, generous members of the Woodberry community have funded gifts and pledges totalling $60 million of the $80 million goal. We are confident the Woodberry community, inspired by the challenge from current and former trustees announced at the campaign’s public launch, will step forward through  the next year to secure the remaining $20 million.

Woodberry’s endowment is a source of enduring strength. Funding tuition assistance through the endowment gives the school the confidence to extend more tuition assistance, secure in the knowledge that the funding stream for those scholarships will be consistent from year to year. Because endowed scholarships are invested and grow in value over time, endowed tuition assistance is less vulnerable to inflation than annual gifts and lets Woodberry make the multi-year commitments needed to support a boy throughout his time as a student.  

The legacy of tuition assistance stretches back ninety years, to the beginning of the Great Depression. In those days Headmaster J. Carter Walker and other members of the faculty did all in their power to ensure Woodberry boys could continue their education, even if the Depression meant their families could no longer pay tuition. 

Though the economic shocks of the COVID-19 pandemic were thankfully far smaller than those of the Depression, Woodberry met the challenges of the past two years in a spirit J. Carter Walker would have recognized, extending emergency assistance to families in the spring of 2020, 2020-2021, and the current school year.

Endowing tuition assistance ensures Woodberry is sustainable and can meet future challenges with this same spirit while making sure all boys yet to come who are seeking an education focused on intellectual thoroughness and moral integrity can join the Tiger brotherhood. 

To learn more about how to establish a scholarship, please contact Will Fletcher ’06 at wb_fletcher@woodberry.org or Jim Holladay ’72 at jim_holladay@woodberry.org

Though we are still working toward fully funding the tuition assistance goal for the Campaign for the Boys, gifts already received have allowed Woodberry to extend assistance to twenty-two more boys and to expand the dollar amount of tuition assistance given to families.

This video captures what Sam Swinson, a sixth former from Winston-Salem, had to say about his Woodberry experience during his fourth-form year.

Scholarship Spotlight: The Commonwealth of Virginia Scholarship Fund 

The Commonwealth of Virginia Scholarship Fund (the “Commonwealth Fund”) was established in 2022 to provide endowed tuition assistance for boys at Woodberry from small cities and rural areas in Virginia. From the school’s earliest days, Woodberry has served boys from these places, and this fund will provide tuition assistance to boys from anywhere in the commonwealth outside of the Northern Virginia, Richmond, and Hampton Roads regions. Like all tuition assistance scholarships, it is awarded based on need.

The current student body includes boys from places like Franklin, Irvington, Rixeyville, Cape Charles, and Northampton, as well as others from the towns and counties that surround Woodberry. The goal is to raise $5 million.

This new fund joins the Carolinas Scholarship Fund, which was established in 2019 by lead gifts from Ben Wall and Trey Dempsey, both members of the class of 1994. The Carolinas fund supports boys from North Carolina and South Carolina who live outside of cities such as Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro in North Carolina and Charleston, Columbia, and Greenville in South Carolina.

OneWoodberry Supports the Boys Here Now

By the close of OneWoodberry on February 24, more than 3,500 alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and students had made a gift to the Amici Fund. With more than $3.4 million raised for Amici by the end of the day, OneWoodberry marked an important step in the Campaign for the Boys. 

Amici supports current operations, meaning gifts can go toward everything from faculty salaries and benefits to new athletic equipment to special events and programs for students on the weekend. But while the Campaign for the boys continues to raise money to endow tuition assistance and ensure it will be available in perpetuity, Amici is also serving as a crucial source of aid to boys here now. Without generous donations to the Amici Fund — whether during OneWoodberry or throughout the year — fewer boys would be able to receive the support they need to attend the school. The gifts received during OneWoodberry alone paid for more than forty scholarships for the current school year.

After the Campaign for the Boys meets its goal for endowed scholarships, the Amici Fund will be available to support an even wider range of school priorities and continue its tradition of funding existing programs and supporting the creation of new ones that serve boys here now and those yet to come.

Thank you to all members of the Tiger Nation who made a gift during OneWoodberry and contributed to its outstanding success.