GRAIN Reaches $50 Million Milestone

Groton School received the ultimate gift on its holiday wish list: Fundraising for GRAIN (GRoton Affordability and INclusion) reached $50 million!

A donation received on Christmas eve, fitting the spirit of the season, pushed GRAIN to its milestone, ensuring that students at Groton today and tomorrow will benefit from an inclusive and accessible community.

GRAIN reached this fundraising goal well ahead of the anticipated timetable. The original hope was to raise $50 million by 2020—a six-year plan. Enthusiasm for the values behind GRAIN cut that time frame in half—despite the fact that GRAIN fundraising began while the school was completing major fundraising for a Schoolhouse addition. GRAIN fundraising will continue through June 2018.

“In my thirty-five years of teaching, this has been one of the most important and humbling educational initiatives in which I was privileged to be a part,” said Headmaster Temba Maqubela. “To all who supported GRAIN with their treasure, time, ideas, or a simple nod in the boardroom—there is no greater satisfaction for Vuyelwa and me than supporting the education of all children regardless of their ability to pay. It is a privilege to serve this cause on the Groton Circle and beyond.”

The initiative, conceived by Mr. Maqubela and formally embraced in November 2014 as the Board of Trustees’ number-one strategic priority, seemed to strike a chord among donors, who stepped up quickly and generously, understanding the school’s commitment never to deny admission because of a family’s financial standing.

“Groton School is an extraordinary place with extraordinary leadership striving to do extraordinary things,” said Trustee William Gray P’15. “This is an investment in the children, in the mission of empowering young lives with extraordinary potential that would otherwise go unfulfilled. It is inspiring to see how the broader Groton community has rallied around the mission of GRAIN. I can’t wait to see what the school does with the opportunity it has been granted.”

GRAIN was committed to ensuring accessibility while containing tuition costs, which were curbed through a three-year tuition freeze. In addition, one of GRAIN’s primary goals was to address the talented missing middle—the children of professionals, neither high- nor low-income, who are saving for college and may not have funds available for independent school tuition. Thanks to GRAIN, for the first time in the 2017–18 school year, the largest percentage of financial aid recipients—52 percent—were from families earning between $120,000 and $200,000. Forty-five percent of those receiving aid were from families earning less than $120,000. Groton continues to waive tuition for families earning under $80,000, thanks to a policy implemented in 2008.

Groton’s financial aid decisions take into consideration a variety of factors, including a family’s need to save for college as well as current tuition obligations for siblings at other schools and colleges. The school realizes that without GRAIN, a Groton education could be out of reach for many, including some children of Groton graduates who have heeded the school’s ethos of service and pursued careers at nonprofits and in government.

GRAIN rests upon a foundational belief that inclusion benefits every member of the community and that exposure to multiple backgrounds and points of view is, in fact, an essential component of a good education. It was a belief that immediately inspired the board of trustees—and the extended Groton family. “As trustees of Groton School, we are acutely conscious of the fact that we are standing on the shoulders of those who came before us and must also prepare foundations for those who follow,” said Board of Trustees President Jonathan Klein P’08, ’11, ’18. “Making Groton accessible to all has become the number-one strategic priority of my term as president, providing our headmaster with strong trustee support for this crucial initiative. By freezing tuition for three years and setting an ambitious fundraising goal, which we have met in record time, Groton has sent a message to independent schools that we are open to all. We are enormously grateful to our donors, who embraced GRAIN wholeheartedly.”

GRAIN’s impact quickly became apparent. The admittance rate for those who receive aid and those who do not was exactly the same in 2017–18, at 12.6 percent. Notably, applications from both financial aid and full-pay families increased after GRAIN’s launch, bucking a national trend of declining applications from those who can afford full tuition and demonstrating the broad appeal of a sincere effort to build a truly inclusive community.

“GRAIN has been the most significant and gratifying initiative that I have been a part of in my ten years as a trustee and the almost fifteen years we have been parents at the school,” said Franz Colloredo-Mansfeld ’81, P’13, ’15, ’18, chair of the board’s Development Committee. “Not only have we dramatically increased our capacity to provide financial aid to many deserving students, but we have also made a broader statement about making the school accessible to all families by seeking to address the high cost of private school tuitions.”

The generous donors behind GRAIN heeded the call to be impatient for inclusion: of the $50 million committed, more than half already is in hand, working to support Groton’s Inclusion Scholars. GRAIN is adding five Inclusion Scholars—applicants who particularly embody the goals of GRAIN—each year for four years, increasing financial aid students by twenty by 2018–19.

“This effort had deep and broad appeal among our alumni and parents,” said Director of Development and Alumni Affairs John MacEachern P’10,’14,’16. “Time and again we heard from donors how much they believed in GRAIN’s objective of accessibility and how they wanted to see it working now.”

The initiative was announced in November 2014 with an initial $5 million gift. By June of 2015, donors had given $14.6 million to GRAIN. A year later, in June 2016, the total was at $21.4 million, and by June 2017, $32.4 million. In recent months, GRAIN’s message caught fire, thanks in part to a $5 million challenge grant, igniting the rush of gifts that pushed fundraising to $50 million just over three years since GRAIN’s inception. Current parents, who see firsthand the value to their children of an inclusive community, contributed approximately half of the funds raised.

Two parents of children who chose to attend a different school gave to GRAIN anyhow, inspired by the message. Another major donor, a parent new to the community, made a generous gift and a few months later, decided to double it. “The grand idea of inclusion will bring the best talents to the Circle,” he explained. “. . . More importantly, it will set an example for educational institutions globally so that more and more talented children will have access to a top-level education, thereby creating value for society for the long term. …

“It is not only about Groton,” he wrote to the headmaster. “It is about our children and about what message we shall send to the world.”

Another GRAIN donor summed up his motivation to give in terms of Groton’s values—the emphasis on service, excellent education, meaningful faculty-student interaction, and the lasting friendships formed. “If people really think about what Groton stands for,” he said, “. . . the importance of supporting it financially to the fullest extent possible becomes a total no-brainer.”

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