CSF National Organization
Our Past
Ted Forstmann and the late John Walton first met as donors to the Washington Scholarship Fund (WSF), which was founded in 1993 to provide scholarships for low-income families in our nation’s capital. When more than 8,000 applications poured into WSF for the 1998-99 school year, the two men realized there was real demand among poorer families for alternatives to the public school system.
In 1999, Forstmann and Walton committed $100 million to fund 40,000 initial scholarships for children to attend independent schools across the country. When Mr. Forstmann launched the program on The Oprah Winfrey Show, more than 1.25 million people called CSF’s toll-free number to inquire about potential scholarships. That was the beginning of what is now a thriving program in more than 30 cities nationwide.
Click here to view a library of videos available on the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s main site.
| Theodore Forstmann
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John Walton
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Our Present
Originally, CSF was planned as a four-year program, and families were not promised anything beyond that. But it quickly became obvious that to truly ensure the children would gain a solid foundation, we would have to fund them through the 8th grade. So, after the first four years, we went back to our partner programs and generous donors in an attempt to extend the original awards through 8th grade and allow younger siblings to get scholarships, too. Most of the partner programs not only agreed to extend the original scholarships through 8th grade and add siblings – they also awarded brand new scholarships.
Today, many of the CSF partner programs continue to offer new scholarships annually. The CSF national headquarters in New York administers more than 9,000 scholarships in New York City, as well as providing matching funds and program support for the partner programs nationwide.
