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Theodore R. & Vivian M.

  Johnson Scholarship

Foundation, Inc.

Mission of the Foundation

Theodore R. Johnson began his business career with United Parcel Service by answering an advertisement for an industrial engineer in 1923.  He worked closely with UPS founders, James E. Casey and Evart McCabe, and became a vice president in 1928.

While fulfilling his duties as a general executive with chief responsibilities for industrial engineering and human resources, Mr. Johnson attended night school at the University of Southern California and was granted an MBA.  He was one of UPS’ original Vice Presidents and served on the company’s management committee.  Mr. Johnson believed strongly in UPS and bought shares of the company at every opportunity.  When Mr. Johnson started with UPS, it was a private company of approximately 300 employees.  It has grown to an organization of several hundred thousand employees, is publicly traded on the NYSE and carries on its business all over the world.  Mr. Johnson retained his UPS stock, even after his retirement in 1952. The value of this stock continued to appreciate with the growth of the company.

Mr. Johnson was a humble man and attributed much of his success to good luck.  After he and his wife, Vivian Macleod Johnson, moved to Florida, they resolved to share their wealth with people who had not been as lucky.   They chose education as the vehicle to assist others.  They were both university graduates and education had been an important ingredient in Mr. Johnson’s successful business career. The Johnsons were also great believers in the free enterprise system, which allows people, through individual effort and initiative, to better their lives and the lives of those around them.  The Johnsons  believed that education empowers people to better participate in the free enterprise system.

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson identified three general categories of prospective beneficiaries (children of Florida UPS employees, American Indians and disabled persons) and three named institutions (Palm Beach Atlantic University, The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind and Gallaudet University) as core recipients of a substantial block of Foundation grants.  They intended these grants to “enable specific students who might not otherwise have the financial means to … acquire an education, to give them employment skills, and to develop those factors which contribute to character and social motivation resulting in the students becoming positive elements in our economic free enterprise system.”  In addition to grants to the core recipients specified by Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, the Board has identified a number of new, education-based programs which respond to the mission of the Foundation.

The Foundation was founded in 1991 and Mr. Johnson served as President until his death in 1993.  He was succeeded by his son, Theodore R. (Ted) Johnson, Jr., who led the Foundation until his retirement from the Board in 2001.  Malcolm Macleod, nephew of Vivian Johnson, succeeded Ted Johnson, Jr. as President and still serves the Foundation in that capacity.

Mandate 

Our Foundation was created from the fruits of the free enterprise system, operating in a free and democratic society.  We believe that the free market system is the best in the world, but we recognize that some people fail to benefit fully from the system through no fault of their own.  It is these people that the Foundation seeks to assist.  Particularly, our mandate is to serve the disabled and those people who are disadvantaged because of their social or economic circumstances.

Education 

We have chosen education because we believe that it is the best means to empower people to become more independent and to participate more fully in the benefits of our society.

Strategy

Our responsibility is to execute the Foundation’s core education programs effectively and to develop new ones.  We realize that our resources are limited and, in order to be most effective, we must concentrate our efforts.  We must also constantly re-evaluate and improve our programming, and change or replace non-core programs when we find alternatives offering a better combination of value and effectiveness.

Programs

To maximize the impact of our new programs, we feel an obligation to do more than provide scholarship aid to needy individuals.  We also seek to identify niche areas which may have been overlooked or under funded by other educational foundations.  We seek ways to amplify the impact of our programs through cooperation with other organizations.

Partnership 

We realize that our programs are, at best, a catalyst.  The people we seek to assist and the organizations that serve them do the real work of change and are usually the best source of ideas for new program initiatives.  We look to them to help us understand how to make our work more effective and, whenever we can usefully do so, we engage them as partners.

Risk Taking 

Just as the free market system fosters progress through innovation, the Foundation hopes to employ innovative programs to achieve its goals.  Cognizant of the fact that innovation always carries with it the risk of failure, we will proceed only after careful evaluation and will monitor our programs closely as they progress.

Stewardship 

The Foundation is intended to be a perpetual body and it is our responsibility to improve it with each succeeding generation.  We attempt to do this by creative programming, vigilant oversight of existing programs, and careful nurturing of our organization and its financial assets.  The Foundation seeks to grow its assets over the long term by achieving at least an annual rate of return of 5% plus the annual inflation rate.

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