Cause

The United Negro College Fund is dedicated to closing the educational attainment gap between African American students and the rest of the population. UNCF helps these students attend college and graduate by: providing operationg funds for its 21st century academic programs, while keeping tuitions cheaper, administering 400 scholarship and internship programs, and serving as a national advocate for the importance minority higher education by using print and the media to carry out the mission in its motto, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste."

History

In 1943, Dr. Frederick D. Patterson, president of what is now Tuskegee University, urged his fellow black college presidents to raise money collectively through an "appeal to the national conscience." A year later, on April 25, 1944, Dr. Patterson, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune and others incorporated the United Negro College Fund with 27 member colleges. Early supporters of the UNCF included President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John D. Rockefeller, Jr. That first effort raised $760,000, a sum that would be worth approximately $8.6 million today. John F. Kennedy was also helpful to the UNCF, and donated proceeds from his book Profiles in Courage to them. The tagline of the UNCF "A mind is a terrible thing to waste" was coined by Forest Long in 1972. Long explained that it represented a "plea to everybody to reject the prejudices of the past and consider the inner person."

Why I Chose The UNCF

I chose the UNCF because the lines that prejudice and racism still draw today between the population is ridiculous and this is one of the great causes that is trying to fade that line. UNCF also encourages the African American population to be something, instead of live their lives around drugs, gang violence, and guns. The UNCF to me represents a great cause, as well as one of the good reasons why students should go to school, because they are here to help educate a large part of the population, and because it is tough to pay for school these days.

Institutions

The UNCF consists of locations mainly in the south including: Georgia, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, The Carolinas, Alabama, and Tennessee. These instituions offer a wide range of scholarships, and although a majority are of African American ethnicity, these scholarships are available to all ethnicities, whether you are attending a member college or not.