MRS. JONES' SUPPORT OF ASPSF

As told by Ralph Nesson, Exec. Dir.

"I met Bernice in the mid-1980's.  At the time I was Executive Director of the Economic Opportunity Agency of Washington County (EOA) and she began contributing to our Elderly Nutrition Program and to the Washington County SPSF.  These were unsolicited contributions (she read about the programs in the paper) and I went to her home to introduce myself and thank her personally for her help.  She continued to support the WC/SPSF in virtually every semester we offered scholarships.  She would say, You let me know if any of the girls need help, and I would inform her when we had more applications than money to offer. She would then simply have a check written for the balance.

I went to Bernice in early 1989 with the "dream" of taking the Single Parent Scholarship Fund concept statewide, this after five plus years of seeing the Washington and Benton County programs grow into very successful local organizations.  She immediately responded with the offer of a $50,000 grant from the Harvey and Bernice Jones Foundation to cover a salary and travel expenses.

Her generosity, complemented by funding from the Office of Community Services and the Tyson Foundation, enabled me to resign from EOA and become the director of the new Arkansas Single Parent Scholarship Fund in 1990.  Three years of funding from the Harvey and Bernice Charitable Trust followed and other foundations and corporate supporters joined Bernice in their support of our efforts.

In 1993, we requested of Bernice a $500,000 challenge grant with which to build an endowment for the ASPSF.  Although it took five years to meet the challenge, we completed our campaign in 1998 and now have a permanent endowment of 1.2 million dollars.

The ASPSF would not have been possible without Bernice Jones.  She believed in the idea, she encouraged it when it was only a dream, she brought it to life with financial underwriting, she nurtured it with continuing grant support, and she ensured its future through the largest gift it has ever received.  Those first few years of organizational infancy were the "critical time" of either continuation or failure and she never wavered in her desire to see us succeed."

To learn more about the Jones Center for Families, visit their web site at jonesnet.org.

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