Thoughts for Thursday: From a Scholarship Recipient, Me

​I’ve talked about finding the stories of impact and sharing them with your donors. The importance of letting donors see how their gifts have transformed lives cannot be overstated.

Upon reflection, I realized that I have overlooked throughout my entire career, one very important story: my own. I have searched for the stories of scholarship recipients at every institution I’ve worked for and totally forgot to be recognize the impact donors have had on my own journey.

I was lucky enough to have been awarded a 4-year leadership scholarship which covered my room and board at my alma mater, The University of Southern Mississippi, but I was also the recipient of a generous scholarship so that I could go to London one summer for study abroad. The Dean of the Honors College also sent me on two trips (one to Princeton and one to Washington, D.C.) using funds that I now know must have been generated from Annual Fund gifts. I also know that charitable donations helped to support the fantastic Honors Forum series that brought the most incredible scholars and public intellectuals to Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Here are some experiences that I have been able to have because I received scholarship support:

• I graduated my undergraduate with a paltry amount of student loan debt, especially considering that my experiences included a month abroad, a month long internship in Washington, DC, a two-week conference trip to DC and a week at Princeton for a conference.
• I've seen Van Gogh’s The Starry Night and a number of his other paintings in Paris, London, New York and Washington, D.C, sparking a lifelong interest in art history even though I never studied it formally.
• I've attended a Presidential inauguration and laid eyes on the lap-desk which Thomas Jefferson probably wrote The Declaration of Independence upon.
• I got to fly internationally before 9/11.
• I’ve visited Stonehenge, many castles, and a number of other sites in Britain.
• I’ve been to a conference at Princeton University and took my first day trip to New York City.
• I’ve stood in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and stared at an Egyptian hawk statue for well over 15 minutes.
• I got to visit Hampton Court Palace and stand in the same place that Henry the VIII and Anne Boleyn probably walked. (In the photo above, I’m standing in the famous gardens in 2001.) The ceiling of The Chapel Royal is one of the most aesthetically arresting things I’ve ever seen. So beautiful.
• I got my first professional job in fundraising through a job bank that I signed up for during one of the first trips I took to Washington, DC. At that job, I met my husband.
• I'm pretty sure that I'm the only member of my family to of been out of the country who wasn't in the military.
• I’m pretty sure I'm the first member of my family to pursue any level of graduate education
• I've heard Dr. Brian Greene (the string theorist), Jared Diamond, Bob Woodward, Thomas Hoving, Ralph Nader, and David Brooks and many other world renowned speakers talk about their areas of expertise. Several of these intellectuals, I still read every new book they publish.

As you can see, I have so much to be grateful for. I will let my career in philanthropy be my personal thank-you to all of the hundreds (if not thousands) of donors who made my education and my life today possible.

With sincere thanks,

​Jessica Cloud