Community Foundation of the Ozarks

Stroking the Fires of Knowledge

The CFO manages more than 475 private scholarship funds created by individuals, families and companies that want to provide a path to higher education for generations to come.

Donors determine the size and eligibility criteria for the scholarship they create, and the CFO manages the process on their behalf. Scholarships of more than $1.6 million were awarded to nearly 850 students during the 2022-23 academic year.

After World War II ended, Jennie Barritt was teaching students of all ages in a tiny, one-room schoolhouse in the Cedar County hamlet of Wright. Over the next 34 years, she and her husband Ellis, a WWII veteran and rural mail carrier, also tended a 160-acre farm. They lived within their means and eventually built assets that Jennie decided to give back to El Dorado Springs students through the Ellis and Jennie Barritt Educational Scholarship Fund.

“I wanted for them to get to go to college, and if I could help the, I wanted to,” she says. Though she did in 202, her dedication to the students of El Dorado Springs will continue on for generations.

https://www.cfozarks.org/