The schools' foundations: from Public Education Foundation to the Education Alliance

Alumni Association 1985; Public Education Foundation 1995; one merged corporation 2025

Two corporations, two origins: The South Bend Community School Corporation is a government; the money raised privately for its schools runs through nonprofits, and for forty years it ran through two of them. The older began in 1985 as the South Bend School Boosters, an advocacy effort formed by Louis Baker to save School Field stadium from demolition, and grew into the South Bend Alumni Association — Baker also founded the South Bend Boys Club and chaired Camp Eberhart's board, in the dense civic résumé the association's own Hall of Fame preserves. The younger grew out of a community-wide strategic planning effort led by Superintendent Dr. Virginia Calvin in the early 1990s, which concluded that state funding alone could never meet all the needs of South Bend's public schools; in response, community leaders including Dr. James Wilson, Mendel Piser and Margaret King founded the Public Education Foundation in 1995 to expand educational opportunities, support teachers and enrich learning. It worked for three decades under its later name, the South Bend Education Foundation — a 501(c)(3) making teacher grants, its small-gift programs supplemented in the 2020s by challenge grants from the AEP Foundation and a $15,000 Comcast award in February 2024, under executive director Steve Funk.

The merger: In 2025 the two organizations united to form the South Bend Education Alliance — "a single, stronger partner," in the merged corporation's own announcement, dedicated to supporting the whole student and the educators who serve them, carrying both predecessors' work: the foundation's grants to teachers and classrooms and the association's alumni network, Hall of Fame and scholarships. The merger is this section's cleanest modern example of the sector consolidating itself: two small corporations with complementary missions, both rooted in the same school system, choosing one roof. The Alliance announced the union publicly in 2025 and opened its Hall of Fame season for 2026 under the new name.

Sources:

1. South Bend Education Alliance (southbendalumni.com), "SBAA About" — the two predecessor histories in the merged organization's own telling: the Public Education Foundation founded 1995 by Wilson, Piser and King out of Superintendent Calvin's strategic planning; the Alumni Association begun in 1985 as the South Bend School Boosters under Louis Baker to save School Field; the 2025 union forming the Alliance; the Hall of Fame biography of Louis Baker.
2. Comcast Corporation, release of 6 February 2024 — the $15,000 grant to the South Bend Education Foundation; Executive Director Steve Funk; the AEP Foundation challenge grants of 2022 and 2023 ($25,000 each); the foundation's 501(c)(3) form and mission.
3. South Bend Education Alliance (southbendeducationalliance.org) — the merged corporation's mission and its 2026 Hall of Fame.