My Nonprofit Reviews

Since 1991, the Single Parent Scholarship Fund has been a favorite and most admired education program in my community. The organization has not only awarded over a million dollars to single mothers and fathers in Pulaski County, it has a graduation rate of almost 90 percent, which is unprecedented. The program and its significant outcomes have addressed some Arkansas’ most serious issues – higher education, career development, welfare-to-work and economic growth. I have long valued the advancements made and served for six years as a very proud board member.

In 2010-2011, I spent a year in treatment battling cancer. In July of 2010, the day before surgery, SPSF’s executive director delivered to me a pair of pink boxing gloves to take to the hospital, signed with well wishes by my fellow board members. I packed the gloves in my suitcase, and asked family to place them in my hospital room as a reminder of their endearing friendship.

While at UAMS, my evening nurse, Dot, asked me about the pink gloves. As I began to tell her about the Single Parent Scholarship Fund, she politely interrupted to tell me her own story.

In the 1990, Dot became a single mother with three young children. Without a degree, she was faced with a serious burdensome journey – the unexpected financial hardship of providing for a family of four without many employment options due to a lack of education. With a desire to attend nursing school, Dot applied to SPSF and became a first-year scholarship recipient. Today, she is a senior-level oncology nurse at UAMS, and has also managed to successfully raise three grown children, all having completed their own college degrees. At SPSF, we have long known that when you help bring a single parent out of poverty, they take their children with them. Dot’s educational success, and that of her three children, is living proof.

My chance encounter with Dot reminds me that we are all one community, and our connections run deep. Dot’s story embodies what the founders of SPSF had hoped to accomplish. And now, a single mother who was once in great need, has fulfilled her dream of a college education and career, and is now helping others like me during our own time of need.

An investment in the Single Parent Scholarship Fund impacts the wellbeing of countless non-traditional students who are able to open up new doors and put their families economically back on track.