Thea Endowment Announcement

In July of 2013, Thea Foundation quietly launched a $2 million campaign to endow our scholarship program by July of 2015. The foundation is proud to announce that, as of June 2015, we reached our goal within our two-year timeline. The pressure to stick to that timeline was fueled by a $500,000 matching grant offered by Windgate Charitable Foundation in the circumstance that we met our goal by July 1015. To formally announce this news, Thea Foundation will host a press conference Wednesday, July 22, 2015, at 10:30 a.m. at Thea Foundation’s center for the arts, located at 401 Main Street in North Little Rock, Arkansas.

Speaking at the press conference will be John Brown, executive director of Windgate Charitable Foundation, and Paul Leopoulos, executive director of Thea Foundation, and several contributors to the endowment will be present as well as scholarship winners ready to answer questions about their experiences as beneficiaries of Thea’s Scholarship Program.

Although our $2 million goal has been met, the pursuit of further funding for the endowment will never cease, as increased funding will allow us to expand by increasing scholarship amounts and adding new categories or more awards to existing categories. Thea’s scholarship program, which began in 2002 with a handful of visual arts scholarships awarded to students from North Little Rock High School, Thea Kay Leopoulos’s alma mater, has grown to award more than $2 million to 280 students over the last 14 years. Thanks to the generous donors who contributed to this endowment, Thea’s Scholarship Program will be a permanent source of college funds for Arkansas teens.

Please join us, our supporters and our students at Thea Foundation July 22 to celebrate this milestone. Light refreshments will be served.