In 2003, Phil VanDerhoef and Kathleen McKay went to the first Celebration of Light to support a friend.
“By the time we left, we’d fallen in love with Fulcrum,” Phil said.
Phil and his wife Kathleen are now long-time supporters of the Fulcrum Foundation. Phil joined Fulcrum’s Board of Directors in 2013. He currently serves as the chair of the Distribution Committee. Both Phil and Kathleen also played a significant role in Fulcrum’s Embracing Our Legacy Campaign.
“Fulcrum supports students and kids who are going to be involved in their communities and who will work to improve those communities,” Phil said. “We were so happy that our kids were in Catholic school and we’d just like every parent to experience that feeling.”
Fulcrum announced its Uplift campaign at the Celebration of Light on January 24. This campaign will work toward the aspirational goals in support of our three core program areas: tuition assistance, school partnerships, and building leadership capacity.
“This campaign is about so much more than just continuing the financial support of students and schools”, Phil said of the campaign.“ Fulcrum supports initiatives with the Office of Catholic Schools to build leadership for our schools and develop programs to assure sustainability of our schools”.
“Our support is part of something bigger,” Phil added. “Our students go into the world to do good things with the foundation they got from their parents and schools. We never know how great the impact of one student or family will be. It is like throwing a stone into still water and watching the ripples go out from the pebble.”