Sixteen years ago, $3,000 worth of motors donated to Educational Assistance Ltd. enabled Claudia Mancini to finish college. Now, after a 10-year career as a financial analyst and adviser, EAL’s first scholar has come full circle. For the past three years, Mancini has been the executive director of EAL, a national not-for-profit organization based in Wheaton that converts donated products into college scholarships.
Verlyn “Swede” Roskam of Wheaton, a scholarship student at Knox College who graduated in 1951, founded EAL in 1981 to help other students finance their college educations. He had seen lots of surplus inventory when he came in contact with various businesses, so he came up with a plan to turn this surplus into scholarships. Companies would donate products to EAL that EAL would place on college campuses. In exchange for the donations, colleges would grant students tuition waivers; donors would get a tax deduction.
Roskam’s dream — and Mancini’s, as well — became a reality when W.W. Grainger Inc., an industrial equipment distributor in Lincolnshire, donated $5,000 worth of motors and air conditioners to North Park College in Chicago.
“I was a kid from Argentina,” said Mancini, who came to the U.S. in 1980 as a high school foreign exchange student in Lafayette, Ind., and now lives in Clarendon Hills. “My father, a prominent professor, died in the 1970s. My mom, a teacher, said to me, `I have all my love and support to give you, but no money (for college).’ “
Luckily, Mancini met Roskam while working as a waitress at a church camp in Lake Geneva, Wis. She applied for and received the first EAL scholarship.
After graduating from North Park College with a degree in economics and computer science, Mancini got a job at a commodities house, where she worked her way from intern to vice president. Later she spent three years with the Financial Research and Advisory Committee, the consulting arm of the Commercial Club of Chicago, which advises and assists the City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools.
In 1995, she was recognized by Crain’s Chicago Business’ “40 under 40” for being named president and executive director of EAL before age 40. She had taken the job with EAL because she was attracted by the opportunity to manage an organization and the responsibility she would have. One of her primary missions at EAL is to help students find successes similar to her own.
“I’m very committed to the organization,” Mancini said. “I have always been committed to institutions and organizations that touch my life. I was very blessed to be at the right place at the right time.”
Last year, under Mancini’s direction, EAL converted more than $1 million worth of products into scholarships for 591 students across the U.S. In less than 20 years, the organization has placed more than $14 million worth of goods on the campuses of its 170 members nationwide.In DuPage and Kane Counties, EAL works with Aurora University, Judson College in Elgin and Wheaton College. Illinois has a total of 16 EAL-affiliated schools.
Donors find EAL through the organization’s public service ads and through referrals from other corporations that have made donations. EAL’s corporate development director, Pam James of St. Charles, monitors company mergers, plant closings and phased-out product lines. She contacts the companies, offering them a simple means of cutting warehouse costs: Donate the inventory to EAL, educate a needy kid and get a tax deduction.
“Items of value for schools include garden and lawn equipment, computers, office furniture, filing cabinets, work stations, mail-room supplies and maintenance products like hand tools, drills and wet vacs,” James said.
“I learned about EAL years ago when they came to a Rotary program,” said Bob Hubbard of Hubbard’s Ethan Allen Interiors and Hubbard’s Business Interiors of Batavia. “It’s a perfect fit for a business like ours. We have furniture samples, things we’ve taken back or overordered, things that are hard to sell. It allows us to clean up our inventory. Rather than have them in the warehouse, it turns out to be a better alternative. We can deduct (the donations) as a business expense.”
Items not needed by colleges, like out-of-date computers or athletic shoes, are sold to recyclers and brokers. The proceeds from the sales cover EAL operating expenses. Although EAL rarely turns away any donation, it won’t accept perishables, land, hazardous materials, prescription drugs, used or open software or products from foreign countries.
EAL assigns a tuition-waiver value and a handling fee of about 10 percent of the value to each item. Items are shipped directly to schools or to EAL’s warehouse in Rockford. Every Thursday, one of EAL’s seven staff members sends a list of available items to member schools. EAL colleges pay no membership fee and receive two statements each year, detailing tuition waivers granted and scholarships awarded.
“At the beginning, we determined who got the scholarships,” Mancini said. “But now we let the schools do what they do best. They pick the students based on financial need, as determined by federal standards, and academic standing. EAL scholarships fill the gap between loans and grants (and tuition fees).”
EAL has outfitted women’s dorms with computer terminals and equipped an entire computer lab at Shimer College in Waukegan. At Wheaton College, a high-tech camera provided a four-year scholarship for a needy minority student.
“We latched on to them about four years ago,” said Patrick Brooke, Wheaton College controller. “We haven’t had a lot of opportunity to work with them. But we did get a slow-motion camera through EAL and set up an $18,000 scholarship. We got a good deal on the camera: It had a wholesale price of $20,000, and we paid a $2,000 handling fee. We gave the scholarship to one student. In addition to the student’s regular financial aid package, we gave the student $4,500 a year for four years.”
The college athletic staff uses the camera to film its golf and tennis teams. The camera allows players and coaches to watch swings and strokes in slow motion and determine where the player needs improvement. As with most EAL transactions, everyone benefited: the college, the donor and, most of all, the student who got his degree.
“I know what it’s like to be a student in need,” Mancini said, “knowing that there are wonderful doors to open through a college education. You know that the world you look at is a different world when you have a college degree in your hand than the world (you look at) without a college degree. I don’t think I would have achieved what I have achieved if I didn’t have my four-year college degree.”
———-
For more information about Educational Assistance Ltd., call 630-690-0010.
