The 1866 Scholarship Match
A generous match funded by Barbara Weitz ’70 and Wally Weitz ’70 and their family helped the Every Carl campaign start out $40 million strong.
With a goal of helping students like Zach McCrary ’21, a studio art major with financial need from rural Colorado, Carleton began its Every Carl for Carleton campaign in 2016 by announcing a $20 million dollar-for-dollar financial aid challenge, funded by a generous gift from Barbara Weitz ’70 and Wally Weitz ’70 and their family.
Named the 1866 Scholarship Match in honor of Carleton’s founding year, the match raised $40 million in financial aid funds and gave the college a strong start toward its goal of raising $150 million for financial aid.
Highly popular with alumni, parents, and friends of Carleton, the 1866 Match doubled all gifts of $100,000 to $2.5 million that established or added to an existing endowed scholarship fund. By early 2018—almost a year ahead of its deadline—almost 80 donors had fully claimed all matching funds. Participants spanned multiple generations of Carls, including a bequest from a member of the Class of 1935 and two class gifts from the Class of 1967 and the Class of 1968.
As one of the first donors to benefit from the 1866 Scholarship Match, Carol Van Zoeren ’82 says timing is everything. She had been thinking about a scholarship for years but had been “dragging her feet,” she said. Her parents instilled in her the value of giving back to your alma mater, and the 1866 Match gave her the final motivating push to create the Carol Van Zoeren ’82 Endowed Scholarship Fund.
“Financial aid is important to me to make sure we have diverse views represented on campus,” Van Zoeren said. “A really important part of the Carleton experience is being around intelligent, motivated, controversial, courageous peers.”
For Michael Hartung ’75, the 1866 Match presented an opportunity to add to the scholarship he created in honor of his late wife, Joanne Zack ’76. She had been a warrior of women’s rights, Hartung said, and would have applauded the investment to help young women attend Carleton. When he learned about the 1866 Scholarship Match, Hartung knew it was the perfect time to bolster the Joanne Zack Endowed Scholarship Fund.
“It’s become a challenge for schools like Carleton to keep economic diversity,” Hartung said. “I believe the 1866 Match is important to keep Carleton engaged with the middle class and all that it represents of American society.”
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