Pride Foundation

How One Scholar Read Our Letter

Scholar Natalie Washington

Natalie Washington received Pride Foundation scholarships in 2007 and 2008 while at Central Washington University pursuing her B.A. degree. We asked Natalie to speak at this year’s Scholarship Awards Breakfast, where she updated us on how her career in student affairs has progressed since graduation. Probably, what most people will remember most though is the letter Natalie read to everyone. It was her version of the scholarship award letter that she received from Pride Foundation. Here is how Natalie read our letter:

Dear Nat-

We had a great time hanging out with you during your interview. It’s strange that we even call them interviews considering we ended up laughing so much. Additionally, we’d like to apologize in advance for the parking ticket you’re going to receive in a few weeks from UW Tacoma. You parked in the wrong lot, but we assure you that it was worth it. As a committee and an organization, we are pleased to offer you an entire award packet.  First off, we’d like to present you with the NASP/TRIO scholarship, but please realize that this is just the beginning. Nat, we see you. We truly seewho you are. As an entire community, we recognize that you have awoken each day and faced whatever the world had to offer you head on. Though you weren’t aware of it, we were there in spirit when you took a stand against your Pentecostal upbringing to fully explore the young woman you were becoming. During those dark months when you felt like you had lost an entire cultural community because of you queer identity, we were patiently waiting to embrace you.  We continue to send our children and loved ones to Camp Ten Trees because we recognize that you enjoy volunteering your time each summer to be with them. And when you speak up against discrimination of lesbian, gay, and bisexual armed service men and women,  even though you risk outing yourself to your own Army unit, we’re on the sidelines, cheering you on.

This scholarship that we’re offering is more of an investment than anything: we see the good in you, and we want to help make you even better. We know that by giving you a small boost now, you’ll have the energy to continue to positively impact the LGBT community long into the future.

From here on out, you are part of something larger than yourself. People you have never met and may very well never meet believe in you. When you walk around in Washington, people will smile and wave and give you hugs. They are excited to see what you have to offer to this world.  We are a family, and you now belong to a long generation of loving individuals. No matter what the outside world sees when they look at you, we know the truth: You are a young, beautiful, resilient – sometimes incredibly stubborn – Queer Black Woman. And we love you because of it – not in spite of it. So here is to the future, both yours and ours, because of course, they’re one in the same.

Always- Pride Foundation

Please help us support more students like Natalie by making a contribution today.

Open Letter to All Scholarship Applicants

To: The hundreds of applicants who were incredibly qualified but did not receive a scholarship

From: Anthony Papini, Pride Foundation Scholarship Director

Dear Scholarship Applicants (Who were incredibly qualified but did not get scholarship funds),

I am writing this open letter to you to let you know first and foremost, we are incredibly proud of you. Your contributions to your communities and your drive to be academically and professionally successful are telling of you as individuals. You are all strong leaders in your own right, and we know this even if we weren’t able to give you a scholarship.

I want you to know that it was incredibly difficult for the scholarship committee to make their decisions this year. It’s a challenge every year, but this year was absolutely the most difficult ever. Your applications were incredible! Your need was substantial! If we had limitless resources, we would have loved to provide you and every other qualified student with enough funds to give you a full ride to your chosen institution. However, we face the reality of over 1,100 applications to consider and needing to narrow that down to a small enough group that the support we give is still financially significant.

We are all very proud to have awarded $340,000 this year, and at the same time I wish we had double or triple the amount to award! I know that each year, generous people in our communities give to Pride Foundation to support the scholarship program and we work non-stop to secure new funds to for the program. I imagine it can be frustrating to put the time and effort into a scholarship application, only to be turned away. You are our motivation to continue increasing our awards, so someday we don’t have to turn people away for a lack of funding.

As I look at the applications, I see so many unique stories. We have students who are as young as 17 all the way up to students in their late 50’s; LGBTQ and straight ally students; people from both rural and urban communities across all five states we serve; people who are afraid to come out and those who have been out since they were young children; students of various ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds; and students attending every type of post-secondary education imaginable.

You are a part of those stories, which is why I would strongly encourage you to submit an application again next year. Quite often, applicants are awarded a scholarship on their second try because they spend time refining their application between submissions. I would like to offer myself at your service to help you review your application before submitting.

Above all, I encourage you to continue doing the amazing work you do and let members of your communities know that funding the scholarship program means that more incredibly talented, motivated, and deserving students – like yourselves – will have a chance at an education and will, in turn, be able to contribute even more completely to your respective communities.

With Pride,

Anthony

Anthony Papini
Scholarship Program Director

Update on 2010 Scholarships

The 2009/10 scholarship applications are in and the application cycle is now closed.

I’m sure some of you are curious about what is happening with the applications right now.

If you applied you should have received an email confirmation that your application was received.  Over the next six weeks hundreds of volunteers are reading and rating applications to decide who will be selected for interviews. You’ll hear back from us in late March or early April regarding your interview status. Interviews might happen in your local community and/or in Seattle.

After that, award announcements are made in early May and our scholarship awards ceremony takes place that same month.

Best of luck to all of you who applied!

Scholarship Timeline

January 31                        Scholarship Applications due

February and March    Volunteers read and rate applications and determine interviews

March & early-April    Those selected for interviews are notified

April                                    Interviews

May                                     Scholarship awards announced

Record Applicants- How Did That Happen?

The first question everyone asks when I tell them that we have a 113% increase in scholarship applicants is; how did that happen? I have heard some people make assumptions that it is due to the economy, and so many people returning to school, but I don’t think that tells the full story.

I believe there are two major factors that attributed to this record increase, and those are outreach and accessibility. We had a significant increase in outreach efforts this year as more and more past scholars are volunteering to do scholarship workshops at their schools and in their local communities. I think it is tremendously helpful when a prospective scholar can talk directly to someone who has received a scholarship. It demystifies the process and can make their goals seem that much more attainable. I really have to say a special thank you to all the volunteers who took time to do scholarship workshops- you made a huge difference!

Moving to an online application also seems to have contributed to the increase, by making the application more accessible. This year we have record applications from Montana and Alaska, two states from which we have consistently tried to increase applicants. We will do some follow up with our scholars to see how much being able to apply online helped them find out about the scholarship.

Now that all 1,155 applications are in, the fun begins! Volunteers are hard at work reading and screening applications and deciding who will be interviewed in April. And thanks to our community’s generosity we will be increasing the amount we award in scholarships from $285,000 in 2009 to $330,000 this year!

Update on 2010 Scholarships

The 2009/10 scholarship applications are in and the application cycle is now closed.

I’m sure some of you are curious about what is happening with the applications right now.

If you applied you should have received an email confirmation that your application was received.  Over the next six weeks hundreds of volunteers are reading and rating applications to decide who will be selected for interviews. You’ll hear back from us in late March or early April regarding your interview status. Interviews might happen in your local community and/or in Seattle.

After that, award announcements are made in early May and our scholarship awards ceremony takes place that same month.

Best of luck to all of you who applied!

Scholarship Timeline

January 31                        Scholarship Applications due

February and March    Volunteers read and rate applications and determine interviews

March & early-April    Those selected for interviews are notified

April                                    Interviews

May                                     Scholarship awards announced

$300,000 in Scholarships Available

Pride Foundation is now accepting scholarship applications for the 2010-11 school year. We anticipate awarding $300,000 in scholarships during this cycle. Along with our scholarship partner, the Greater Seattle Business Association, we offer 50 different scholarships, but have only one application to complete.

New this year is our online application. Gone are the days of paper, as now students can create an account at PrideFoundationScholar.org and complete their application completely online. This makes the application more accessible and also decreases our administrative costs.

Find out who qualifies for a Pride Foundation scholarship here and read about our past scholars here.  People and companies interested in starting a scholarship at Pride Foundation can find more information here.

Help us spread the word by downloading a copy of the scholarship poster and displaying it at your school, community center, workplace or local bulletin board.

Scholarship Fellows Program Launches

Last summer, our scholarship volunteers and staff met to review goals and future directions for the  program, and the idea of providing our scholars with a paid internship was discussed as a possible new program to implement. The thought was to pair scholars with organizations that have gotten a Pride Foundation grant. We loved the idea and decided then and there to look into the feasibility of introducing this project within the next three to five years.

Well, we were so inspired by the project that we got a little ahead of ourselves; we just completed the inaugural run of the Pride Foundation Fellowship Program!

We were fortunate to have a wonderful Wales Foundation Fellow, Kraig,  who not only researched successful implementation strategies for a fellowship program; he actually implemented it THIS year!    We ended up pairing scholars with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Puget Sound and Kitsap HIV/AIDS Foundation.

Scholar Lor (r) at Big Brothers Big Sisters Puget Sound

Lor Anderson, a Pride Foundation 2009 scholar, worked with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Puget Sound to improve LGBT “Big” outreach and develop a model that could be implemented nationwide to engage LGBT adults with queer youth. And scholar fKristina Armenakis assisted the Kitsap HIV/AIDS Foundation and was able to improve their volunteer training.

The Kitsap HIV/AIDS Foundation decided Kristina’s impact was so important they hired her on for the remainder of the year to conclude her work! Both fellows said the experience of working with progressive, LGBT-friendly organizations served as a pivotal point in their careers and provided them with skills and knowledge they would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.  I look forward to watching this program expand across our region and developing a network of Pride Foundation Fellowship alumni in the future.

I also would like to extend a sincere “Thank You” to our own Wales Foundation Fellow, Kraig, who was responsible for implementing and running the fellowship program.  The program was a huge success and we were fortunate to work with him!  Kraig arranged the matches, conducted training events for the scholars and host organizations, and completed an incredible final report detailing both the successes and areas for improvement for this program.  Thank you for all you’ve accomplished!

Scholars Cheered On at Pride

I spent the last two weeks of June in Italy, where planning was underway for Genova Pride, the largest collection of LGBT community events and activities in Italy. The festive atmosphere was incredible! I love it that members of the LGBTQ community and our allies across the globe are organizing annual parades like this to celebrate our achievements and call attention to much-needed changes. Things are no different here in Seattle, where upon returning home, I immediately got geared up to march with our Pride Foundation scholars in the Seattle Out & Proud parade. It was tremendously fun and extra special considering this year marked the 40th Anniversary of Stonewall.

A Scholar Greets a Fan

We all arrived around 9:00 a.m. to queue up with hundreds of other parade floats. As in years past, we joined our scholarship partners – the Greater Seattle Business Association – and marched together. While most of the scholars were from Washington, we also had students come up from Oregon and even over from Montana! Around 11:00, the music started and we were off. There were thousands of folks lining Fourth Avenue, cheering our brilliant and dedicated scholars on as we handed out GSBA guides and waved to the crowds. The sheer number and reaction of the crowds were really unbelievable for our scholars who had never been in the parade before. It brought such huge smiles to all of our faces.

As we arrived at the end of the parade route, near Seattle Center, everyone was laughing and having a good time. Several scholars who marched said that they loved that people they didn’t even know were proud of them. I was once again reminded of the significance of community. I know that the scholarships we give to students are financially meaningful, but it is often that community support that matters most to these students.

Celebrating the 2009 Scholars

This past Saturday over 450 people congratulated and cheered on our 2009 Pride Foundation scholars at Pride Foundation’s annual scholarship breakfast. It was such a tremendous morning and it was particularly meaningful to me because this was my first scholarship breakfast as the Scholarship Program Director.

The 2009 Pride Foundation scholars

Shortly before 9:30, the scholars, their guests, volunteers, donors, and friends of Pride Foundation started arriving. After folks got settled in, the wonderful and humorous Lee Callahan from Progressive Talk 1090 got the show started. The true highlight of the morning was hearing the stories of several of the scholars. These individuals were gracious, eloquent, and passionate about their causes and educational goals. And the community that gathered heard them and rallied to help, raising over $60,000 for the scholarship program!

Our lovely Emcee, Lee Callahan (third from left) with her partner and friends

After the breakfast, several scholars came up to thank me again. I kept telling them that I’m the one who owes them thanks for the incredible work they are doing on their campuses and in their communities. These emerging LGBT and straight ally leaders are literally changing the world with their actions!

Scholar Kyle (r) enjoys the breakfast with his boyfriend

As I receive thank you notes and cards from several of the 119 scholars, I am struck by the profound gratitude these individuals have for receiving our scholarships. One scholar wrote that she, “is most appreciative of you believing in me enough to help fund my education”. Another scholar told us that he was literally speechless at the overwhelming support and love that was present in the room. He wrote, “the magnitude of this scholarship and the tremendous impact that it will make will allow me to achieve my educational goals, engage with my community, and change my life!” Wow!

That's me (center) with Scholarship Program co-chairs Rachel Valdez and Jef St. De Lore