The Foundation’s purpose is to recognize and reward outstanding girls and young women from the institutions that featured most prominently in Fitzie’s life, including Tenacre Country Day School, Dana Hall School, Harvard/Radcliffe College, the Harvard Business School, and others.
Every spring the Foundation’s Trustees select several young women in whom the Trustees recognize many of Fitzie’s most outstanding qualities. The award presented to each is twofold. First, the selectee receives a monetary grant whose purpose is to assist in the further development of her character, interests and talents. Under the guidance of the Trustees, each recipient then determines how the award could be most valuable to her. In the past, Foundation grants have been used for such diverse purposes as tuition, travel or living abroad, and lessons in a master class or other instruction in a field where the recipient has shown extraordinary promise. Second, the recipients will be given a commitment of ongoing support of a nonfinancial nature through “Friends of the Fitzie Foundation,” an ever-growing network of past winners and Foundation supporters.
The Trustees award fellowships to young women who possess a combination of the characteristics which Fitzie reflected in her life: pursuit of excellence, exceptional skill and dedication in a special area of interest or expertise, leadership, commitment to the community, academic excellence, a sense of exuberance, adventure and new horizons, compassion and understanding. In short, the Trustees look for individuals who are both outstanding in a specific respect and demonstrate balance, humanness and a strong system of personal values.
Fitzie’s friends came from a remarkably broad range of backgrounds and represented an incredibly wide variety of interests. All those who contribute to the Foundation’s endowment become “Friends of the Fitzie Foundation.” This network will be an increasingly instrumental part of the Foundation’s impact on the lives of its award winners, as the Friends provide recipients with ongoing help on an informal basis through assisting in finding employment, public service or volunteer opportunities, giving career guidance or simply sharing ideas. As the Foundation has matured, many former award recipients themselves have chosen to become “Friends of the Foundation,” further enriching this unique network with their own character, enthusiasm and experiences.
A Directory of the Friends of the Fitzie Foundation will be published periodically, listing the names, addresses, affiliations and special interests of the Friends. The Directory is intended for Friends and award recipients, as a reminder of their important ongoing role in the foundation’s mission: not only to provide financial support, but to help recipients in other ways and beyond their time at the institution from which they were selected. It is the hope that the Friends, in turn, are kept informed about the girls and young women selected each year and the ongoing progress of former award recipients.