Gift to foundation to start campaign
The Economics Arkansas Foundation will receive a $50,000 gift from the R.E. Lee Wilson Trust Foundation of Little Rock.
The gift serves as a matching gift to initiate a three-year, $3 million legacy campaign to endow the foundation, the fundraising division of Economics Arkansas, a nonprofit educational organization.
“We are deeply thankful for this generous gift from our longtime friend Perry Wilson and the Wilson family,” said Ray Hobbs, chairman of the Economics Arkansas Foundation board of directors. “This contribution launches a firstof-its-kind campaign in the history of our organization that will make a huge difference to Arkansas teachers and students.”
The overall fundraising campaign is to raise the foundation’s current endowment from $2 million to $5 million. The organization provides economic and personal finance education to Arkansas teachers and students, training more than 2,800 teachers and impacting approximately 175,000 students each year. With increased contributions from the foundation, Economics Arkansas could expand its staff and resources to offer professional development training and support to more Arkansas educators.
“It is my honor and privilege to be associated with an organization as great as Economics Arkansas, and to be in a position to offer some help,” Wilson said. “My father was involved with Economics Arkansas for many years before he passed away, and he instilled in me a passion for education. It’s a personal and professional goal of mine to see economic education taught in all grades, starting in Pre-K and continuing through high school. With this gift, I challenge my peers to support that goal. Knowing how to thrive in our free-market economy and how to budget money could be the key to solving many of the problems folks are facing these days.”
Perry Wilson is a managing member at Barber Law Firm PLLC in Little Rock and is serving the last of his three-year term as chairman of the Economics Arkansas board of directors.. His late father, Mike Wilson, served 29 years on the Economics Arkansas board. He and his family previously owned Lee Wilson & Company of Wilson in Mississippi County in northeast Arkansas.