President’s Report 2020

By Glenn Walton
President

Fellow McDonough Supporters,

Let me begin by thanking you for your support of our New Hampshire golf course employees.  We could not have provided financial support to ninety-two students this past year without the generous donations of golfers from around our state.  Like many other non-profits, 2020 provided many challenges and I am pleased to report that the McDonough Foundation was able to overcome these obstacles and continue our mission of providing undergraduate scholarships to these worthy young people.

One of our challenges was having the volunteers who serve on the McDonough board be able to meet.  Like many other entities, we became adept at having Zoom meetings and conference calls to conduct business.  We did finally manage to have one socially distanced board meeting, but I suspect it will be deep into 2021 before we meet in person again.  In spite of these administrative challenges, McDonough is well-positioned and poised to have another successful year in 2021.

We also had to adapt our scholarship process to meet the demands of these troubling times.  Normally, our Directors would meet with our scholar applicants at various courses throughout the state in order to conduct brief interviews.  Instead, we had applicants meet electronically with various members of the board via Skype, Zoom, etc. in order to interview and evaluate our scholars.  The board continues to report that our scholar recipients are a bright and motivated group.

After working through our various Covid-19 related challenges, including having to cancel our annual Pro-Am golf tournament, we managed to award $117,800 in scholarships to ninety-two young men and women employed at 27 New Hampshire golf courses.  McDonough recipients are currently attending 46 colleges and universities.  With these most recent awards, the Foundation has now awarded a total of $2,873,310 in scholarship grants since inception of the program.

We were very pleased that despite the Covid-19 challenges, the McDonough Foundation assets grew to over $1 million for the first time.  The rise in the equity markets was very helpful, but most importantly we added four new endowed scholarships which brings our total endowment to over $800,000 for the first time.  We are very grateful to the families that established these scholarships, especially the Erb family who created a memorial scholarship for Bob Erb, who passed away this year.  Bob was a long time Board member and former president of the McDonough Foundation and we will miss him greatly.

McDonough looks forward to 2021, we plan to award $127,000 in scholarships, as that would put us above $3 million awarded since we were founded in 1955.  This milestone is well within reach and gives us a worthy goal as we look to rebound from the pandemic.  By the time you read this, we will have unveiled a new website that will be cleaner, more modern and capable of accepting donations.  We also plan to return with our 38^th edition of our Pro-Am in the fall of 2021… stay tuned for details.

Finally, I have personally decided that 2021 will be my last year as President.  Back in 2008, I was recruited for the board and have chaired the Pro-Am for twelve years.  I have served as Secretary, Managing Director and Vice President, before becoming President back in late 2018.  In 2020, I took on the role of interim Scholarship Chair and enjoyed it very much.  I plan to remain on the McDonough board, remove the “interim” title and be the Scholarship Chair for the foreseeable future, as I very much enjoy seeing the academic growth and maturation of our scholars.

Please know that the McDonough presidency will go into the extremely capable hands of Bill Everett of Laconia Country Club.  Bill is the current Vice President and is the chair of our Permanent Fund committee that manages the assets of our endowed scholarships.  He has been instrumental in the creation of several new permanently endowed scholarships and will have the support of nearly twenty volunteer directors from around the state.  I have every confidence that McDonough will continue to maximize your donated dollars for the benefit of New Hampshire’s golf course employees.

Have a great 2021!

Glenn H. Walton
President
McDonough Scholarship Foundation