The Montana Angus Association and Montana Angus Auxiliary create a $25,000 endowment within the Angus Foundation to provide more scholarship opportunities for Montana Angus youth.

March 13, 2012

3 Min Read
Montana Angus Youth Scholarship Endowment Established Within The Angus Foundation

A commitment to Angus youth rings true in the state of Montana. In December 2011, the Montana Angus Association and Montana Angus Auxiliary decided to create a $25,000 scholarship endowment within the Angus Foundation to establish the Montana Angus Youth Scholarship (MAYS). Not only does the endowment create more scholarship opportunities for Montana Angus youth beginning in 2012, the donation, made at the end of 2011, also helped advance the Angus Foundation’s $11 million fundraising drive Vision of Value: Campaign for Angus, which concluded Dec. 31, 2011.

MAYS will replace the continuing education scholarship that the Montana Angus Association and Montana Angus Auxiliary awarded for the first and final time in the fall of 2011. Montana’s two Angus organizations’ shared goal with this Fund is to award one $1,000 scholarship to a student continuing at least his or her second year of higher education. The first scholarship will be awarded at the 2012 National Junior Angus Show in Louisville, Ky., for the upcoming 2012-13 academic year. 

The recipient of the scholarship must have at one time been a National Junior Angus Association member and must currently be a junior, regular or life member of the American Angus Association®. The recipient must also be a resident of Montana and a member or past member of the Montana Junior Angus Association.

The recipient must be pursuing at least his or her second year of higher education, as no graduating high school seniors will be considered. This reasoning is based on not wanting to conflict with the existing scholarship that the Montana Angus Auxiliary currently awards to a graduating girl and boy. The scholarship must be applied to undergraduate studies and is applicable to any field of study.

Sara Stevenson, Montana Angus Auxiliary president, says the exciting part of transforming this scholarship to the Angus Foundation is how it simplifies so many aspects of awarding Montana’s Angus youth with scholarships.

“It (MAYS) allows the students to fill out one application and be considered for every scholarship that the Foundation administers,” Stevenson says. “This allows our students more opportunity than we alone can offer them, without anymore work than they have already done to earn this money. My hope is that although the kids may not earn this particular scholarship, they will be considered for another award, thus increasing the number of kids we have applying for these monies.”

Montana Angus Association President Joe Goggins agrees that a main reason for developing the scholarship endowment within the Angus Foundation was to provide Montana Angus youth with more scholarship opportunities, considering the many different scholarships the Angus Foundation awards annually.

“This is a very exciting scholarship that will hopefully create some opportunity and interest for Angus youth in Montana,” Goggins says. “Our hope from an Association standpoint is that this scholarship will allow Montana students an opportunity not only for this scholarship, but many more that the Foundation offers.”

Angus Foundation President Milford Jenkins says endowments offer state associations, individual Angus breeders and other supporters a convenient way to support the Angus Foundation while simultaneously creating a permanent funding mechanism to provide for the scholarship in future years.

“Other benefits include the meaningful legacy of the donor(s) being carried on in perpetuity in the Angus breed, in this case, the names of these progressive Angus organizations in Montana wishing to create even more scholarship opportunities for Angus youth in their state,” Jenkins says.

For more information about MAYS and other scholarship endowments within the Angus Foundation, log on to www.angusfoundation.org. The 2012 Angus Foundation Scholarship application deadline is May 1, 2012.

If you are interested in learning more about how your name or your farm/ranch name can be carried on in perpetuity by establishing a scholarship endowment within the Angus Foundation, contact Jenkins at [email protected]

The Angus Foundation was established in 1980 as a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization to support Angus education, youth and research. To learn more about the Angus Foundation and the programs it supports, log on to www.angusfoundation.org or call 816-383-5100.

Subscribe to Our Newsletters
BEEF Magazine is the source for beef production, management and market news.

You May Also Like