President Hendrix and Husband Charles Craft Donate $400K for Shepherd Success Fund

Shepherd University President Mary J.C. Hendrix announced a gift of $400,000 at the spring meeting of the Shepherd University Foundation Board of Directors on May 11.

In announcing the gift, Hendrix said she was inspired by the recent $250,000 challenge gift from Michael Smith, Foundation president and Shepherd alumnus, in support of Shepherd’s College of Business.

The gift from Hendrix, a Shepherd alumna, and her husband, Charles Craft, will create the Shepherd Success Fund to provide vital seed support for Shepherd’s future by funding initiatives critical for training the next generation. In addition, funds may be used to challenge other private donors to step up to support university initiatives. The university will designate specific projects that will qualify for matching funds from the Shepherd Success Fund, administered by the Shepherd University Foundation. In this way, the impact of private gifts to those initiatives will be doubled by a match from the fund created by Hendrix and Craft.

“We are running an academic enterprise at Shepherd based on sound business principles, and we have to be realistic about the minor investment of only 15 percent funding from the state of West Virginia,” said Hendrix. “We need to be creative in the partnerships we build to advance the university’s mission. We are counting on our business partners, donors and alumni to invest in Shepherd, and we are betting on ourselves to be highly successful.”

To learn how you can support Shepherd University, please contact Monica Lingenfelter, executive vice president of the Shepherd University Foundation, at 304-876-5397 or via email to [email protected].