Lawrence & Otie Sanborn Educational Endowment Fund

Fund Purpose:
To meet the educational needs of Grant County.

Fund Story:
A modest life, a lasting gift
How the Sanborn Endowment reshaped Project Leadership

Longtime Grant County residents Lawrence and Otie Sanborn never had children during nearly 63 years of marriage. They spent their professional lives working at a local glass plant and living modestly. But when they passed away, the savings from that careful life were directed in perpetuity to meeting the educational needs of other people’s children.

While the Lawrence & Otie Sanborn Educational Endowment has provided funding to several Grant County educational organizations and institutions, its support of Marion-based nonprofit Project Leadership for more than a decade has changed how local students find their way into careers.

The proof of the endowment’s impact on the organization sits in Project Leadership’s mission to provide equitable access to education and careers beyond high school.

“It wasn’t until we dug into the Sanborn work that the word ‘career’ was added to our mission statement,” Project Leadership President & CEO Tammy Pearson said. “On paper, the Sanborn Endowment funds are a small share of our budget, but their impact has been far bigger.”

Project Leadership works with 22,000 K-12 students across 14 school districts in Grant and Delaware counties to prepare them for their educational and career paths beyond high school. This includes advocating for 21st Century Scholars; teaching a college and career curriculum; providing hands-on help with the FAFSA, school applications, and scholarships; and counseling coalitions that link school systems in both counties.

For years, Pearson said, the group built its work around Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program, which assisted students through the maze of state requirements for college tuition aid. The Sanborn initiative allowed the organization to tackle a harder question – What resources does a young person actually need between a high school diploma and a first real job?

So the coaches started small. They began visiting with students one at a time, some as young as eighth grade, to talk through their interests and what a given path might require. It is a private conversation carved out of a packed school day, which Pearson calls a unicorn of service delivery. Many of the students, she said, had never been asked what they wanted to do.

The fund also supported an endeavor to hold on to what those conversations surfaced. When students take career assessments, the results too often disappear into a file drawer. Project Leadership built the AEROS™ tool, a career exploration and work-based experience platform where students can track their aptitudes and interests so a coach can pick up the thread months later. Pearson calls it a game changer.

The Sanborns’ original bequest gift carries an obligation the community foundation takes seriously. The Sanborns gave for education broadly, so prospective grantees, such as Project Leadership, have to show how its career work honors what the couple wanted.

That trust gets tested. When one approach did not work the way the team hoped, Pearson went to Dawn Brown, the community foundation’s president, to talk it through.

“We wanted to make sure we were honoring Mr. and Mrs. Sanborn,” Pearson said, and together they adjusted course. The grant renews over several years, with Project Leadership sharing what it has learned and where it wants to go next, and the foundation’s board ensuring each step stays true to the Sanborns’ wishes.

The clearest measure of the work is the numerous stories of young people impacted by Project Leadership. One young man, Johnathon Myers, encountered Project Leadership in middle school. He came up through the program as a 21st Century Scholar, and Pearson helped review a letter he wrote for his college application where he talked about wanting to provide for a family of his own one day. That letter helped earn him admission to Purdue University. And in a full-circle moment, this young man later earned his degree, took a job at Ivy Tech in Fort Wayne, and currently serves on Project Leadership’s board of directors.

“I’ve always been proud of my ties to Project Leadership and its impact on my journey,” Myers said. “Project Leadership is not only dedicated to telling the stories of the youths in our community, but they also continue to provide our community with the resources and confidence needed to create lasting, impactful stories of success.”

Grant County gives more to scholarships than most places of its size, and much of Project Leadership’s work is helping students clear the financial barriers between them and that money. But Pearson’s ambition now reaches past any single job. She wants students to leave high school with the durable skills – communicating, solving problems, working alongside other people – that hold up across the many careers most of them will pass through.

The Sanborns didn’t set out to fund coaching sessions or software. They didn’t know those words. They gave for education, trusted the people who followed them, and let them work out the details about how to accomplish the goal. Today that money runs through a nonprofit the couple never saw.

“Maybe they were on to something before the rest of us were,” Pearson said.

Decades later, in a quiet conversation with an eighth-grader nobody thought to ask, a couple who never had children of their own keep helping raise Grant County’s kids.

Fund Impact:
The Lawrence & Otie Sanborn Educational Endowment has impacted Grant County through the following grants and scholarships: