September 2020
Dear Friends,
While 2019 seems as if a lifetime ago to all of us, we write today to acknowledge and thank all of you, our loyal and ever-expanding circle of friends, for your generous support of The TEAK Fellowship. To be honest, 2019 was the cause of some concern on our part as to whether our Fellowship could raise the annual revenue that we had in the recent past so soon after completing a wildly successful $3.5M capital campaign to support our growth plan. This Impact Report should serve to put that concern to rest. With your ongoing devotion to our mission and your belief in our ability to execute on it, TEAK enjoyed another banner year on the fund-raising front.
Our TEAK community will remember 2019 as the year in which our Fellowship began making good on its strategic and financial plan to increase our Fellowship by 15 students per class or by 50% and maintain that rate of growth over the next decade. In 2019, TEAK set out to deliver on our promise to all of you that we would not expand our numbers for the sake of expansion, nor would we make any compromises to the breadth, depth, and overall quality of our program for which our Fellowship has been known for over 20 years. This Impact Report will provide you with a brief update as to our ongoing success.
TEAK continues to provide the largest class in our 22-year history (and our nine other classes) with our same signature high-quality academic instruction and individualized support. We continue to prepare our Fellows for admission and success at our Nation’s most prestigious secondary schools, colleges, and universities. We continue to cultivate the next generation of highly trained, ethical, and diverse leaders.
Normally, we would invite you to celebrate our ongoing achievements at our annual Gala, but there is nothing normal about 2020. There will be no Gala. Like you, TEAK has endured a series of epic events, ones that have had a profound effect on our Fellowship. We have spent months mitigating the disproportionate impact the pandemic has had on our particular 320 students. We have also spent weeks focusing on how to support these same students as they try to make sense of what has transpired relative to systemic racism and oppression as well as a pandemic that disproportionately affects our Fellows and their communities. To that end, TEAK will assess its practices, make changes where necessary, and play a role in our Nation’s renewed efforts to become a more inclusive and just society.
There is much to celebrate relative to 2019, as our Impact Report suggests. That said, we believe you would take particular pride in the manner in which the TEAK community responded when challenged as never before. With your assistance, TEAK has not missed a beat. Again, we thank you and look forward to the next time we are in each others’ presence, perhaps more than ever.
Sincerely yours,
John F. Green
Executive Director
Marc Becker
Chair