About the Nonprofit
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Friends of Payton (FOP) is the primary organization for parents and guardians to support Walter Payton College Prep. FOP has a 3-pronged mission, as it creates and supports opportunities to (i) Volunteer, (ii) Participate & Build Community, and (iii) Financially Support Payton.
Our mission is to enrich the school's educational and extracurricular activities with resources that supplement the limited funding allotted to Payton through the Chicago Public School (CPS) system. FOP is run by parents/guardians of current Payton students as an audit-compliant 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Donations to the school through FOP are tax-exempt.
As Co-Chairs for the Walter Payton College Preparatory High School (Payton) Spring Fundraiser on April 29th, we hope you will join us in making our 2022 event a success by becoming a Corporate Sponsor. Contributions from businesses such as yours are critical in ensuring the continuity of Payton’s educational programs, and we are asking for your support in 2022. The financial need is especially acute this year due to an increase in pandemic-related student need.
Walter Payton College Prep is a public, selective-enrollment high school that is currently ranked the #1 high school in Illinois and the #4 national public high school in the nation (News & World Report’s 2021 rankings) and is a 2021 National Blue Ribbon Award recipient. Payton draws students from nearly every zip code in the City of Chicago. Approximately 53% of our students’ families live at or below the poverty line (around $25,000 in annual income for a family of four), or paycheck-to-paycheck above it, and many of our students also hail from socio-economically challenged neighborhoods.
