The Dane and Jean Nordine Memorial Scholarship Fund

When my father passed away twelve years ago, my sister, my three brothers and I decided to chip in annually and start a memorial scholarship in his honor. It is a fairly common practice in small towns where I come from. A prominent family member dies and their memory is honored by starting a local scholarship in their name.

It was just a small thing we were going to fund ourselves and had no real plans to grow it beyond an annual gift of a few hundred dollars. In fact, several years later, we had thoughts of ending it. We were only giving $250 a year away and it just didn’t seem worth the effort.

When my mother died, my sister Sheila, brothers Dan, Jon, Jim and I all got together and decided that if we were going to continue, we needed to make it bigger. We changed course and decided to increase our fund raising efforts. We held quilt raffles, requested grants and are planning more golf tournaments in the future. This fund raising thing requires effort and dedication, but it is easier than we thought.

Since our original annual $250 gift, we have been able to double our annual scholarship and still put money away to grow our fund for future gifts. Then, we doubled it again. Now this year, we are doubling it again! For the first time, in 2009, we are going to give away TWO scholarships of $1000 each. And we are already hoping to increase that again next year!

I can’t speak for my fellow siblings, but I dream of the day when we have created a fund large enough to support an annual gift of $5000. We are a few years away from that, but it is way beyond what we originally dreamed possible.

According to the 2000 census, my hometown of Karlstad, Minnesota has a population of about 800 people with an average household income in the mid-40’s. That is household, not individual income. As you can imagine, college costs are unbearable for most people. Yet, kids still go off to school and it is our mission to make that a little bit easier for some of them.

Thanks to all of you for helping us make my mother’s and father’s legacy of community service a permanent fixture in the town they lived and loved.

If you are interested in learning more or helping out in any way, shoot me an email. But be prepared, I love talking about it.