The Androscoggin Fund provides for a powerful payoff for students from our communities and for our communities.

Now in its sesquicentennial year, Bates College has served Maine students from its founding. Often this meant serving Maine students without the funds to pay for their education.

Twenty-three years ago, L.L. Bean gave Bates $250,000 to endow a scholarship fund to support students from Maine at Bates, with parallel gifts to Bowdoin and Colby. Each year since, several students from Maine have received four-year L.L. Bean Scholarships from this permanently endowed fund.

A reasonable question: Why do colleges raise permanent endowment funds for scholarships? Are these good “economic impact” decisions? What are the long-term outcomes, both for the students who receive them, and for Maine’s economic growth and its social and political fabric? Simply put, are gifts to a college’s scholarship endowments a good investment?

The 23-year history of the L.L. Bean endowment provides a fascinating case study. With skilled investing, the original $250,000 has quadrupled to approximately $1 million, at the same time that income from the fund has supported several scholarships each year.

What are the L.L. Bean scholars doing now? What kinds of contributions to Maine’s economy and social fabric have they made? What have been the careers and social commitments of those who moved to other states or countries?

In the first year of awards – 1983 – nine Maine students received awards. Of those nine, seven currently live in Maine: a state senator; a legal counsel to the University of Maine system; a teacher and coach; a bank commercial lending vice president; a district attorney; a homemaker; and the executive director of a scholarship foundation that, interestingly, gives away each year twice as much money to Maine students as the original L.L. Bean gift to Bates. To put it mildly, these original L.L. Bean scholars have made substantial contributions to growing Maine’s economic, social and political capital.

The following years show parallel results. Those who were funded by L.L. Bean’s philanthropy now include a physician, a professional dancer, two professors, a Maine state Republican chair, a women’s basketball coach-assistant athletic director in Maine, the founders of businesses in Maine, a teacher in Africa, a community organizer in rural El Salvador, two investment managers, a teacher of the deaf, a Maine social worker, a librarian, a foundation officer, a Ph.D. candidate at Berkeley in materials sciences who is developing alternative energy batteries for hybrid cars, and even a golf pro who now owns a country club.

Of the 32 L.L. Bean recipients at Bates, 94 percent graduated or are currently enrolled, 53 percent live in Maine, 57 percent have earned graduate degrees or are in grad school, and 83 percent have made gifts to Bates to help support students coming after them.

The most recent L.L Bean Scholars include an all-state athlete preparing for a career in environmental chemistry and land use; a local woman preparing for a career in politics and business; a pre-med, three-sport athlete who volunteers in the Lewiston schools; and a first-year student playing football and preparing to be a teacher and coach.

Collectively, these students and alumni provide powerful evidence for the long-term results of college scholarship endowments. For Maine, they have been an absolutely astonishing payoff on L.L. Bean’s quarter-million dollar investment.

As part of its current campaign to raise $120 million, Bates is creating a new endowment, the Androscoggin Fund, to support students from Androscoggin County. In the most recent year, there were 23 students at Bates from the Androscoggin County communities; collectively, those students received $268,000 in Bates scholarships. We hope to raise an endowment of $1 million to support deserving students from Androscoggin County in perpetuity, asking both individuals and corporations to help.

The Androscoggin Fund provides an opportunity for another powerful payoff for students from our communities and for our communities.

William C. Hiss, Bates Class of 1966, is vice president for external affairs at Bates College.