BATON ROUGE — The Tiger Athletic Foundation, in cooperation with LSU, is launching the “Foundation of Champions,” a fund-raising program aimed at providing a perpetual source of financial support to fund athletic scholarships at LSU.
The goal of the project is to fully endow all athletic scholarships awarded by LSU. Currently LSU spends approximately $6.5 million annually to fund athletic scholarships for over 450 student-athletes in 20 varsity sports.
The interest generated from the Foundation of Champions scholarship fund will be used to offset the scholarship costs for current student-athletes. A portion of the interest will be re-invested in order to build the corpus of the endowment and guard against inflation.
Donations to the Foundation of Champions program will be accepted in the form of cash, bequests, stock or other forms of securities and will receive double priority points for philanthropic giving in the unified LSU Priority Point System.
The Foundation of Champions program will allow donors that fully endow a scholarship at $100,000 the opportunity to name the scholarship or to designate an honoree. The donor would then have the chance to honor a former student-athlete that left a positive impact on the LSU athletic program.
For example, the Smith family may choose to honor their family name by endowing the “Smith Family Football Scholarship”. The family would then choose a former student-athlete that their scholarship would honor. For instance, the Smith family may choose to honor the legacy of former Tiger quarterback Bert Jones.
For more information about the Foundation of Champions program please contact Ben Ross at the Tiger Athletic Foundation at 225-578-4823 or by email at benross@lsu.edu.