The Murray Fletcher Sports Scholarship Award
A special appeal is being run for those Old Bedfordians who knew Murray Fletcher in order to name a sports’ scholarship in his memory. Murray himself was always conscious of his huge indebtedness to the bursary fund that enabled him to attend Bedford School and, of course, to the role that Bedford School played in providing the springboard for his own sporting success.
We are grateful to Murray’s family for their permission to establish this appeal and for their involvement. The target within the present Campaign for sport is £250,000. Donors are invited to meet their scholarship recipients if they wish. If you would like your donation to be devoted to this special fund, please indicate this on the donation form.
Named Awards - It is hoped that some of these awards will be given as donor named sports exhibitions and scholarships. The cost of naming an exhibition is £100,000 (made by a gift of £80,000 plus a tax reclaim) and the cost of naming a sports’ scholarship is £250,000 (£200,000 net of tax). Donations towards a named award may be made over a number of years.
Sports Awards
As part of our development plan for sport we want to offer exhibitions and scholarships to reward those with exceptional sporting ability. These awards will allow such boys to benefit from the coaching and facilities available at Bedford, with a view to sustaining a good standard in all sports at Bedford School.
A few awards are currently available at 13+ and 16+ each year but we want to build on this so that more boys with sporting potential can benefit from what Bedford has to offer. The value of each of these awards will be determined by need.
An endowed fund that yielded around £40,000 per annum for distribution would currently provide about six awards each year, depending on financial need and the quality of applicants.
The Foundation’s long term target is to raise at least £1,000,000 for an endowed fund to permanently meet this level of Awards for boys at Bedford School.
Update
This September it will be thirty years since the Main School Building reopened after the notorious fire of 1979. Not surprisingly many boys still look back on this single event as one of the most memorable events of their entire School career, if not their lives! OBs that experienced the fire are also always very proud of the way in which the disruption was kept to a minimum and lessons continued unaffected in no time at all. Without doubt there was a great sense of unity and camaraderie as the School pulled together in difficult times.
To mark this anniversary Pauline Fletcher has kindly agree to donate to the Foundation a framed set of four tiles that Murray and Pauline salvaged from his classroom (B16) two days after the fire. We now intend to auction these tiles off to help raise funds for the Murray Fletcher Sports Scholarship which is part of the Campaign for Sport. Murray and Pauline obviously made a huge impact on many boys over their time at the School, particularly in Redburn. All bids must be in to the Foundation (Foundation@bedfordschool.org.uk or tel 01234 362255) by 1200hrs on 12th November 2011, the Day of the OB Club Annual Dinner in the Great Hall.
