Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits creates endowed scholarship fund

Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits, the world’s pre-eminent distributor of beverage alcohol, has created a new endowed scholarship fund at FAMU. 

The fund will grant four scholarships a year for five years to students who have unmet financial need.  

The scholarships are part of the company’s efforts to promote racial equality, from philanthropic grants and community education programming.

“It is important to our leadership team and employees that we put actions behind our words,” said Wayne E. Chaplin, CEO. “This is by no means the end to our journey, but represents steps toward being part of the solution to drive change and make progress toward eradicating inequality and injustice.”

Neither FAMU nor the company disclosed the financial terms of the deal, but a cursory review of the FAMU Foundation website suggests that a single endowed full scholarship requires a minimum $25,000 donation.  That means that if these were full scholarships Southern Glazer’s gift, at a minimum, would be valued at around $500,000. The value would be less if these were partial scholarships that provided gap funding.

“This (gift) is by no means the end to our journey, but represents steps toward being part of the solution to drive change and make progress toward eradicating inequality and injustice,”said Wayne E. Chaplin, CEO, Southern Glazer's.