For more than 30 years, Ranney Draper has listened to the steadfast drumbeat of his life’s mission: Getting deserving students in need into college – and guiding them to graduation and beyond.
It’s a mission that began while he was growing up in a family that taught him to use one’s resources and position for the betterment of others.
Draper is a long-time philanthropist and co-founder of the Draper Family Fund, which resides at the Orange County Community Foundation.
“My parents set an example of community service and I served on a college board of trustees and helped with initiatives there that supported education in the region up near Claremont, (Calif.),” Draper said. “I had this interest in mind of supporting at-risk kids. I clearly saw the inequality of our society, particularly in education.”
The former founder of Diversified Shopping Centers, Draper turned his attention to investing and philanthropy after he sold that company in 1998. He explored a few charitable avenues before embarking on what has become a profound and longstanding partnership with the Orange County Community Foundation (OCCF). He tasked OCCF with transforming his funding to fulfill his passion for giving deserving young people access to higher education through impactful programs.
“I’ve long espoused the benefit of a donor-advised approach and OCCF has a great one, with a very strong team of people we’ve worked with who have helped us execute the annual plans that we’ve developed each year,” he said.
“In the early days with OCCF, we started making grants for education support and developed several different initiatives that granted money to nonprofits that were doing work in the education equity space. We grew that over time and then we started a scholarship fund as well. This was near and dear to my late wife Priscilla’s heart.”
2022 Draper AVID Scholarship Recipients
The Drapers’ contributions continue to benefit students through Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) programs at local public schools. “They’re usually low-income kids, maybe first in the family to be potentially going to college and generally in the middle GPA category who have potential but haven’t realized it,” Draper said.
The partnership with Orange County AVID programs benefits 10 scholars a year, and scholarships are renewable. To honor his wife, who passed away in 2023 after a long illness, Draper renamed that initiative the Priscilla and Ranney Draper AVID Scholars Program.
Over time, he and OCCF identified another critical need: keeping college first-year students in school and on track to graduate. Through a mentoring, coaching and support service called InsideTrack, a coach is online or on the phone with the students regularly as they navigate the seismic shift of college life, which is especially important for those who are first in their families to attend college.
“It’s pretty difficult for these kids coming out of difficult circumstances to head off to a major university, especially if it’s far from home,” he said. “They can be overwhelmed. The college coach has really helped. We’ve gotten great feedback on that support.”
Draper established the Promising Futures Orange County Fund as a permanent endowment at the Orange County Community Foundation.
The latest iteration of Draper’s focus on education is the Promising Futures Orange County Fund, created with three key values at its core: advancing educational equity by removing obstacles to success, engaging families as partners in education, and providing access to educational pathways so that all students can achieve their full potential in college or career readiness, no matter the conditions or circumstances into which they were born. This includes supporting career training to include technical or trade schools.
It’s an open grantmaking fund that should attract other philanthropists. “It’s a one-stop place for people to invest in educating Orange County’s youth for the future,” he said.
Just as he selected education as his mission and legacy, he enabled his three adult children to choose their own charitable causes.
“Early on, when they were in their 30s, Priscilla and I started making funds available to them through OCCF to do grants in their own communities,” he said. “Initially we thought we’d all sit down at the table and work together on something she and I cared about, but you know, that never works. They live in different areas. So we soon gave them full discretion to eventually work through OCCF, which will then send grants to their own local nonprofits in fields they care about. But our children largely focused on the same general areas that we have, so I guess the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
Looking at what he and Priscilla achieved and thinking about his legacy, he said, “I think back to my parents and Priscilla, and how they would be very proud of what we’re doing. It makes me happy to think about that.”
As a philanthropist, Draper has always considered the message on the gates of Pomona College – his alma mater – as his north star: “They only are loyal to this college who departing bear their added riches in trust for mankind.”
The words are a challenge that Draper has answered time and time again. Through his tireless and generous philanthropic leadership, the lives of countless high school and college students have been transformed by better access to education, with the promise of more to come.
