Ben Franklin’s Bequest Helps Students Pay for College

Craig Mark is studying toolmaking technology at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, learning the trade of his father and his father’s father. And he’s getting a little help from a Founding Father too.

Mark is one of 10 Penn College students receiving a scholarship funded with money that Benjamin Franklin left in his will to benefit Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Franklin’s small bequest has grown to millions of dollars and is being used to support scholarships, symphonies and projects in Boston as well.

In his will, the printer, philosopher and Founding Father set aside 2,000 pounds sterling to be used toward making Pennsylvania’s Schuylkill River navigable. But, in a codicil, he gave 1,000 pounds sterling to the cities of Boston, his birthplace, and Philadelphia, his adopted home.

“I wish to be useful even after my death, if possible, in forming and advancing other young men, that may be serviceable to their country in both these towns,” wrote Franklin, who died in 1790.

But Franklin wasn’t about to leave his philanthropy to chance. For the first 100 years after his death, the money was to be used to make low-interest loans to young tradesmen getting their start in business.

Franklin knew that his bequest would grow over the years, so he stipulated that after 100 years, about one-fourth should continue to be used to make loans, while the remainder could be used for public works. That money helped create the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia, an educational center and museum, and the Franklin Institute of Boston, a technical school now known as the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology.

And Franklin wasn’t done there. He estimated that after 200 years, his bequest would be worth millions in each city. At that point, the total was again divided, allowing Philadelphia and Boston to keep about one-fourth of the total, with the rest going to their respective states -- and any restrictions on how the money could be used were removed.

In Massachusetts, that money has continued to support the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology. In Pennsylvania, then-Gov. Robert P. Casey signed a bill in 1990 dividing the state’s share -- about $1.7 million -- between the Franklin Institute and Harrisburg-based Community Foundations for Pennsylvania, which then divided its share among the state’s various community foundations.

Some foundations have devoted their grants to things that Franklin had supported in his lifetime, such as firefighting -- with the Chester County Community Foundation’s $1,300 grant to the Po-Mar-Lin Fire Co. Other grants have supported women’s health and disabled children.

The Williamsport-Lycoming Foundation, serving north-central Pennsylvania, received an initial grant of $64,000, which it decided to use for scholarships.

“Even though, in a sense, these funds were unrestricted, Ben Franklin’s suggestion that it be used to support young artificers served as sort of a clue for us,” said Kimberley Pittman-Schulz, Williamsport-Lycoming Foundation president. “That’s where we came up with the idea of funding some technical-education scholarships.

“The idea was, what in our community would come closest to helping young tradespeople get started? And we really looked with the relationship with our area’s technical college.”

To be eligible for the scholarship, students must come from the area served by the foundation and be a graduate of a tech-prep or vocational-technical high school program.

That was perfect for Tanya Budman of Allenwood, a scholarship recipient and freshman in the college’s heavy construction equipment technology program.

“I always liked to tinker with things as a kid, taking them apart and putting them back together,” Budman said. “Growing up on a farm, there were always things to tinker with.”

When she graduates, Budman hopes to get a job operating heavy equipment on construction sites.

Franklin could not have foreseen the massive diesel machines that Budman hopes to operate. Still, said John Alviti, senior curator of collections at the Franklin Institute, “he would have approved.”

“A tradesman is what he was, what he apprenticed as, where he made his money initially and what his great wealth was based on,” Alviti said. “He felt something was owed to that field, and that’s why he sponsored that type of apprenticeship for those exercising a skill or craft.”

It was not uncommon in Franklin’s day for the well-to-do to leave large charitable bequests, and Franklin’s was nowhere near the largest in Philadelphia’s history. What was uncommon, Alviti said, was the way the bequest was structured, with specific requirements at first, then an openness to new ideas over time.

That, Pittman-Schulz said, was what made creating the scholarships so rewarding.

“Very few organizations have the opportunity to manage money left by one of the country’s founders,” she said. “And for us in the community foundation field, it’s also an example to our donors of what, if you set aside some philanthropy now, can really happen in the future.”