The National Association of Veterans Upward Bound Project Personnel (NAVUBPP) is a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt organization that hopes to raise awareness of the need to support disadvantaged U.S. military veterans in the pursuit of a college education.
NAVUBPP has always been a voice and professional development vehicle for the Veterans Upward Bound (VUB) program staff members who comprise its membership. Although the individual VUB programs themselves, currently located throughout thirty states, and Puerto Rico, are federally-funded by U.S. Department of Education grants, NAVUBPP does not receive any financial support other than from its members’ participation within the Association.
A few short years ago, the NAVUBPP’s leadership believed that the Association could provide a handful of small $500 academic support scholarships to our neediest and most deserving veterans. The organization decided that four such scholarships should be awarded annually, but shortly thereafter, one of our members, who was also a member of a Viet Nam Combat Trackers organization in Wisconsin, pledged to annually provide the funds for a fifth such scholarship from that veterans’ group. Our leadership quickly realized that the Association would never attract many contributions to its scholarship fund, even within the organization itself, unless donors could claim their donations were made to a charitable, tax-exempt organization – no matter how worthy the cause. In-house donations have funded two additional $500 scholarships each of the last two years.
VUB programs were created by an amendment to the Higher Education Act in 1972, and were designed to assist low-income veterans in completing their post-secondary education. In short, VUB was designed to help veterans “knock the rust off of their academic skills,” while also helping them select and graduate from the school of their choice that, in the end, would help them lead a better, more productive life. Over the years, VUB has evolved into a comprehensive pre-college program for all veterans. Of course, all services provided to veterans by VUB are done so at no cost to them.
Contact: Please email Dinu Skariah (dskariah@gmail.com) for information on how you can support NAVUBPP's efforts.
