Title:Stepping in to support Georgetown undergraduates

With an eye towards helping underserved Georgetown students, Kelley MacDougall (B’90) and Mike Pausic made a current-use gift to support two university priorities: undergraduate financial aid and emergency student relief.

Eighty percent of the gift will support access and affordability, specifically the Main Campus Georgetown Fund.

“Now more than ever, financial aid is critical for many students to even consider attending a top-tier university,” MacDougall says. “I loved my time at Georgetown, and I want other people to have the same great experience. Providing scholarships and funding the unique programs Georgetown has to support students when they get here—like the Georgetown Scholars Program and the Community Scholars Program—has been incredibly rewarding.”

“We’ve been very lucky in our lives, thanks in no small part to our college experiences and the people that we met there,” Pausic says. “Georgetown is committed to ensuring access for great students regardless of their financial need. We want to make sure that they continue to attract and bring in those students in a very competitive undergraduate world.”

Twenty percent of the gift will be dedicated to students in need through the COVID-19 Crisis Response Fund.

“COVID is just one more pressure out of nowhere,” Pausic says. “It’s a shock to the academic system. And we were glad that we could step up when Georgetown needed us.”

The MacDougall-Pausic family has invested in Georgetown for more than 20 years, supporting undergraduate scholarships and related programs, the McDonough School of Business, athletics, and student and university services. As a member of the Board of Regents of Georgetown University, MacDougall has seen first-hand how leaders such as Vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson and COO Geoff Chatas (C’85) prioritize where to allocate philanthropic gifts.

“As donors, we rely on senior leadership to make the right decisions and allocate capital to highest and best use,” Pausic says.

“If you believe in the leadership team, which we do, you can trust that funds can be unrestricted,” MacDougall says. “We know they will be good stewards of the investment.”