FAMU has been awarded a seven-figure gift from Frank and Laura Baker to help students graduate in four years. Recipients of these grants and scholarships sparked from this gift will be tracked from the time received until graduation.
The gift is designed to alleviate financial burdens for students by erasing their outstanding account balances with the university, established the Frank and Laura Baker Graduation Fund.
Frank Baker, the co-Founder and managing partner of Siris, a leading private equity firm with more than $7 billion in AUM focused on making value-oriented, control investments in technology companies, said he sees the gift as more than a donation, but also an investment into the future.
“In 2020, we established Siris’ Florida office, and as part of that, we believed it was important to invest in our new community,” he said. “Through our conversations with FAMU, we learned there are extremely capable students who aren’t able to graduate in four years solely due to limited financial resources.”
He added, “We also discovered that the four-year graduation rate is a key metric in determining the amount of funding FAMU receives from the State of Florida. This made our ‘investment’ decision pretty easy — FAMU students in the workforce sooner and potentially unlocking more State funding.”
The donation will require the FAMU Office of University Advancement, the Office of Student Success and Strategic Initiatives, along with Frank and Laura Baker, to review the cohort of recipients each year to assess how the graduation fund will continue to be distributed.
The first $300,000 of the donation will be used to clear university balances for spring and summer 2022, once grades are in and they are given a review.
The gift is similar to a 2014 $5 million donation by FAMU grad John W. Thompson, then Chairman of Microsoft Corporation, who used a portion of his gift to fund finish strong academic progress and readiness scholarships to help student graduate in four years.