Welcome Letter

Welcome to the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program website! We appreciate your interest and encourage your participation in this exciting opportunity.

If you are a parent, we invite you to use our website to learn how you can apply for a scholarship for your child to attend the private school that, in your opinion, will best serve his or her educational needs.

If you are an individual or the representative of a corporation, we hope that you will use our website to learn more about the importance of school choice and about how to make a donation that will qualify for a tax credit that can be applied against your Georgia income tax liability.

If you are the representative of a private school, we hope that the information on our website will prompt your school community to embrace the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program and participate with us as we offer scholarships to deserving Georgia children.

I invite all of you—parents, interested donors, and private school communities—to join us in this important undertaking. Together, by facilitating school choice, we can help thousands of parents succeed as the first and most important educators of their children.

Sincerely,

Jim Kelly
President
Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc.

Mission

The mission of Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc., is to provide children from low-income families throughout Georgia with greater opportunities to secure a quality K-12 education at the private schools of their parents’ choice. 

Our goal is to operate a student scholarship organization (“SSO”) that provides parents with scholarships for their grade K-12 children to attend accredited private schools and provides donors with the opportunity to make contributions in support of deserving families in a manner that qualifies for the Georgia Education Expense Credit.

Our objectives are:

• to assist parents in applying for and receiving scholarships for their children;
• to encourage and assist individual and corporate philanthropists who desire to invest in the future of children through enhanced educational opportunities; and
• to cooperate with private schools seeking to educate children from low-income families in grades K-12.

Guiding Principles

In pursuing its mission, the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program:

• emphasizes providing scholarships to children from families who are most in need of financial assistance;
• emphasizes the importance of parents investing their time, talent, and resources to make their children’s school community one that achieves high levels of academic achievement and character development; and
• strives to operate in an effective, efficient, and ethical manner with accountability to all our stakeholders.

As evidence of its ongoing commitment to operate in an effective, efficient, and ethical manner, the Board of Directors of Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc., has adopted Model Ethical Principles and Standards.

In addition, the Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program’s legal representative participates in the Association of Scholarship Organization Counsel, Inc. (“ASOC”), the mission of which is to operate student scholarship organizations in accordance with high ethical principles and public accountability.

History

The Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program is an outgrowth of a long history of successful scholarship and school choice efforts.

In 1991, Jim Kelly founded Georgia Community Foundation, Inc. (GCF), a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. Noting the lack of quality educational opportunities for low-income minority families in the Atlanta area, the GCF board created the Greater Opportunity for Access to Learning Scholarship Fund (“GOAL Scholarship Fund”) to solicit contributions for the provision of K-12 scholarships.

In February of 1997, the GOAL Scholarship Fund received a $315,000 grant from the Children’s Education Foundation, Inc., that provided 250 Atlanta families with scholarship assistance. During the administration of this original program, many of these families shared with GCF board members and staff their past experiences with inadequate public schools, financial sacrifices, hard work, and hope.

This inspired Jim Kelly and other Georgia education reformers to undertake a broad range of school choice initiatives, including:

• the drafting and passage of model Georgia charter school legislation;
• the pursuit of publicly funded parental choice in education;
• legal analysis of methods for increased cooperation between the government and faith-based education initiatives;
• the preparation and filing of amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) briefs in two United States Supreme Court cases;
• support for the passage of Georgia’s Special Needs Scholarship legislation (SB 10); and
• support for Georgia’s Education Expense Credit legislation (House Bill 1133).

Board of Directors

Karen Baynes. Karen is an associate director of the University of Georgia Carl Vinson Institute of Government and also coordinates the University of Georgia Committee on Outreach and Engagement. She is a member of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc.

Tim Embry, Secretary. Tim is the president of American Lube Fast, Inc., the largest privately owned and operated oil change and maintenance company in the United States. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc.

Stan Epperson, Treasurer. Stan is the founder and president of Deli Provision Co., Inc., the distributor of Boar’s Head Brand products in the metro Atlanta area. He is the treasurer and past president of the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation and a member and past chairman of the Duke University Brain Tumor Advisory Board. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc.

Rick Gilbert. Rick is the co-founder and chief operating officer of CompuCredit Corporation. He is the chairman of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc.

Terry Hartman.Terry is a member of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc. and serves as the Director of its Vera Jackson Scholarship Program.  She is an active member of the Order of Malta and A Million Matters.  Since 2006, she has participated as a mentor for the Central Eurasian Leadership Alliance.

Allen Hughes. Allen is the Chief Executive Officer of Walton Press, Inc., the sixth largest printer in Georgia.  He is the founder of the Children’s Scholarship Fund of Georgia, Inc.; the Chairman of All Children Matter (Georgia), a school choice advocacy group; and a member of the Advisory Board of University Community Academy, a public charter school serving low-income families in southwest Atlanta.

Jim Kelly, III, President. Jim is the founder and President of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc., Georgia GOAL Scholarship Program, Inc., and Solidarity Center for Law and Justice, P.C., a public interest, religious liberty law firm. Jim also serves as the part-time director of International Affairs for the Washington, D.C.-based Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, Inc. He is a member of the Georgia Board of Juvenile Justice.

Dean Mathison. Dean is a vice president and the controller at Intercontinental Exchange, Inc., a leading global exchange for the trading of energy and agricultural commodities and financial futures. He is a member of the Board of Directors of Georgia Community Foundation, Inc.

Gerard Robinson. Gerard is the president of Black Alliance for Educational Options, Inc. (“BAEO”), a national organization devoted to actively supporting parental choice to empower families and increase quality educational options for Black children. Gerard supported private school choice initiatives in Milwaukee while a Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University.

Staff

• Jim Kelly, Director
• Allen Hughes, Director, Lanier Area Schools Fund
• Gerard Robinson, Director, BAEO Atlanta Schools Fund
• Cheryl Rocca, Assistant, Program Administration