Our Mission

The Pope Valley Scholarship Fund was created to benefit the community of Pope Valley as delineated by the Pope Valley Union School District.  The purpose of the fund is to further the learning and educational goals of local students of all ages, who live, or who have lived in Pope Valley, or who attended and/or graduated from the Pope Valley Union Elementary School.

Building on the Dreams of our Founders

The Pope Valley Scholarship Fund is a local non-profit community organization dedicated to helping local students of all ages achieve their post-seondary educaional goals.  Over the past three decades, our fund has awarded more than a hundred scholarships to help local, deserving high- school graduates  attend a wide range of post-secondary schools, from vocational institutes to community colleges, California State Colleges, the University of California, as well as to private colleges and universities all over the country. Ours awards range from single grants to four-year stipends, depending on the goals and needs of individual students.

The Pope Valley Scholarship Fund was founded to honor the legacies of two longtime Pope Valley residents, Norman K. Blanchard and Joan Burns, both of whom believed strongly  that education and donated generously to assist young people in Pope Valley, and also to recognize and honor the decades of work Betty Wilms contributed to the early years of the fund's existence. The current Board of Directors works to honor their contributions  and  community spirit.  Please help us uphold this tradition. Your generosity enables us both to continue and to expand scholarship opportunities to local students.

It Takes Money to Achieve our Goals

Keeping kids in school, paying for books, tuition, transportation and all the other costs of higher education isn’t free.  Someone has to pay.  And many Pope Valley students come from working class homes; many are members of minority communities.  Parents are often unfamiliar with the complexities of the college application process.  Students do get help from their local school counselors, but the scholarship fund invites students to interviews with members of the scholarship fund board.  In this environment, board members, all residents of the local Pope Valley community, can often give helpful advice and guidance, as well as getting to know students’ personal situations and requirements.  The members of the executive board are all volunteers, so you can be sure that virtually every dollar you give goes directly to students.