Lori Cushman knows that sometimes it’s the little things that can mean the difference between success or failure for a college student. A car breaks down and a commuter can’t get to class. A first-generation college student needs support adjusting to college life. A senior needs an internship but they can’t afford to give up their paying job for unpaid work.

Since 2021 in her role as president of the Justamere Foundation, Cushman has helped to solve exactly those kinds of problems for West Chester students. The foundation has provided grants totaling more than $600,000 to several programs, including the West Chester’s First initiative supporting first-generation college students. The foundation also has supported the Fund to Finish and helped to establish the Fund for Unpaid Internships and the Emergency Transportation Fund. Such programs fill gaps not covered by other kinds of funding.

“Being a private, family foundation, we have some flexibility that some state and federal programs don’t have. We can find those programs that maybe need a little bit of love but aren’t able to really get it from the more traditional resources,” Cushman says. “That's why I say we’re the spackle, because we can fill those cracks. Maybe a little bit of money can make a huge difference if it’s put in the right place.”

It really feels like I get to make a change in someone’s life.

 

Cushman spent most of her career in sales in the software and technical industries. Volunteer involvement in the United Way and serving on the boards of the Coventry Lions Club and West Chester Area Education Foundation paved the way for her position with Justamere.

“It’s the best job I’ve ever had in my whole life and I couldn’t be happier,” Cushman says. “It really feels like I get to make a change in someone’s life.”

She emphasizes that it is the generosity of the family who funds the Justamere Foundation that makes it possible to fund these projects. “It is only because of their commitment to the needs of the community that I am able to do this work,” she notes.

The heart of the foundation’s mission is finding ways to impact generational poverty through grants for career education and supporting programs. Their funding of West Chester’s First is a perfect match. Earning a college degree has long been acknowledged as a path to a better future. Yet first-generation college students navigating that road face obstacles without a parent, guardian, or older siblings to offer guidance.

Justamere’s funding is strengthening West Chester’s First programs and helping to start new programs and resources needed to create a community among first-generation students. It underwrites activities such as a family and friends meet and greet during orientation, a first-gen welcome event, and WCU’s observance of National First-Gen Celebration Day.

Cushman says funding those programs is a way to forge relationships between new first-generation students and upperclassmen. “Who do you go to if you don’t know something? You go to an upperclassman who’s just been through…what you’re about to go through,” she says.

Justamere’s support of the Fund for Unpaid Internships targets students seeking internships in the nonprofit sector, where organizations frequently cannot afford to pay interns. The University’s Emergency Transportation Fund and the Fund to Finish aim to remove small barriers to success that loom large in the lives of many students.

“If it’s a $500 problem, and you don’t have $500, it might as well be $5 million,” Cushman says, noting that Justamere focuses on eliminating such barriers. “They are low-dollar, high-impact donations.”