“Catch a passion for helping others, and a richer life will come back to you.” In 1931, when William H. Danforth, Sr., founder of the Ralston-Purina Company, wrote those words, he was revealing his own keen commitment to service. Several years before, in 1927, Danforth and his wife Adda B. Danforth, grandparents of Washington University’s 13th chancellor, established the private, independent Danforth Foundation. As former Senator and current foundation board chairman John C. Danforth has said, his grandparents created the foundation as an educational philanthropy dedicated to enhancing human dimensions of life.
Since then, the Danforth Foundation has given approximately $1 billion to education, science, and civic projects, and for its first 70 years funded national and international programs. “The Danforth Foundation has helped people throughout the United States further their education and extend their abilities to contribute to society,” Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton has noted. In 1997, the foundation trustees began to focus their support exclusively on metropolitan St. Louis, concentrating on economic development with special emphasis on the plant and life sciences — seeking to turn the area into a hub of biotechnology — and on neighborhood redevelopment and downtown revitalization. In support of excellence, the foundation also funds special projects that make outstanding contributions to the area and, on occasion, religious outreach and early-childhood care and education programs. The foundation’s goal is to use its resources for the region’s long-lasting benefit and to work in partnership to leverage additional funding.
One recipient of the Danforth Foundation’s generosity is Washington University, which in the course of becoming what Chancellor Danforth called “a great American university serving the nation and the world,” has received from the organization at critical passages in University history nearly $400 million. Wrighton is succinct: “The University’s progress to date would not have been possible without the Danforth Foundation’s support.” Because the foundation’s challenge grants had to be matched dollar-for-dollar — and in one case, three-to-one — the pledges stimulated enormous corresponding dollar totals and helped build a strong donor base. As then-Chancellor Danforth said early in his tenure, when he set about the long, hard work of making the University financially strong: “If private universities of excellence are to continue to have a useful national role, they must be supported and supported generously. There are no bargain-basement solutions.”
Thousands of openhearted faculty, alumni, friends, and even students of Washington University have responded to the petitions of chancellors Danforth and Wrighton during the University’s great fundraising campaigns — and to the generous and wise challenge grants the Danforth Foundation provided on behalf of the institution that remains, as former Chancellor Danforth said, “a child of St. Louis” and an “ornament to the community.
The professorships and the academic programs the foundation helps support benefit students by providing them with talented professors in their fields and innovative courses that expose them to a wealth of information and encourage them to integrate insights about humanity perceptively, critically, and compassionately. A single example from hundreds: A Web site description of the American Culture Studies program, which offers both undergraduate study and the Ph.D. and is partly supported through a Danforth Foundation gift, implies the richness of scholarly study: “American Culture Studies is not about the one, but about the many; about the diversity of American experience and American lives; how all things are interconnected.” The program’s director is Wayne Fields, the Lynne Cooper Harvey Distinguished Professor of English in Arts & Sciences, winner of numerous teaching awards, and author of acclaimed books such as Union of Words: A History of Presidential Eloquence (1996).
The foundation’s support also contributes to scholarships that make a world-class education available to deserving students who might not otherwise be able to attend the University. The John B. Ervin Scholars Program awards scholarships for tuition plus a stipend to exceptional students from the United States, selected for academic achievement, leadership, and outstanding community service, and their commitment to serving historically underserved populations and/or their demonstrated achievement and determination in the face of personal challenges.
The Elizabeth Gray Danforth Scholarship Endowment, of the Women’s Society of Washington University, has been fortified in perpetuity with the Danforth Foundation’s $100,000 gift in honor of the University’s late First Lady, bringing the total to more than $2 million. The fund generates money to allow academically outstanding students who have clear goals, embrace learning, are leaders, and care about serving their com-munity to realize their dreams. With the full scholarship, these students in the St. Louis community college system can transfer to Washington University.
Brian J. Saville was one. While studying at Meramec Community College, where he maintained a 4.0 grade point average, he was working as an electrician. By happenstance, he rewired the home of the then-president of the Women’s Society, who told him about the Elizabeth Gray Danforth Scholarship. He applied to Washington University, was awarded the scholarship for 1995–1997. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics in 1997 and was admitted to the School of Medicine, receiving his M.D. in 2001. Now a pediatrician at Missouri Baptist and St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Brian is an instructor in Pediatrics Newborn Medicine at the School of Medicine.
The foundation’s support will also affect student life through the University Center, in development, that will encourage interaction and discussion among students on the Danforth Campus.
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