Make a secure donation via Paypal to Donald and Rose Marie Wong Endowment Fund.
This fund's grant cycle USUALLY opens in the fall and closes the following spring, to coincide with most school-year calendars. However, due to programmatic scheduling changes, the next Wong grant cycle will begin in January 2023 and run through August. These are competitive grants made possible through the Donald and Rose Marie Wong Endowment Fund, a component fund of the Foundation.
Small grants of up to $1,000 each max, will be awarded in memory of Rose Marie Wong, to support music programs for students attending Solano County schools. The instructions and application form needed to request funding is being revised and will become available in January 2023.
Teachers working in Solano County public and private schools, who currently teach music and desire to expand a music program or establish one, are eligible to apply. Submissions are limited to one request per teacher, for each grant cycle. Funding requests received from one teacher working to support music programs at two or more schools will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Nonprofits are not eligible to apply for a Wong grant.
More than one teacher from the same school may apply for funding, however, each request must address a specific need or purpose. Identical requests received from multiple teachers at the same school, for the exact same need or purpose, will not be considered.
Booster clubs, parent organizations, and local businesses are not eligible to apply on behalf of the school. No exceptions.
Grant monies may only be used for music program expenses directly connected to music practice and performance (e.g. the purchase and repair of musical instruments and equipment, sheet music, uniforms and accessories, etc.)
Monies may not be used to pay for lodging, meals, chaperone stipends, or for fundraising expenses. Grant monies may not be used to pay for attendance or admission to an event or social function (i.e. fieldtrip, concert, etc.), or for goods or services that provide a personal benefit to any teacher or student.
Grant monies must be spent during the school year (grant cycle) in which the request is received (January through August). Award checks are made payable to the school, for payment/distribution to the recipient teacher applicant.
As a condition of award, all Wong Music Mini-Grant recipients are required to submit a Music Grantee Report to inform SCF that monies have been spent. The report consists of a brief narrative response to five music program-related questions. Also, teachers must submit at least two program-related digital photos. An SCF Media Release Form is required for photos that capture student participants. Mini-Grant recipients who do not submit a final report will not be eligible to receive future funding. The report form and media release form are also being revised. They will become available to view and download in January 2023 when the next cycle begins.
In 2011 Donald and Rose Marie Wong of Vacaville established the Donald and Rose Marie Wong Endowment Fund, a permanent fund at Solano Community Foundation, to support local music teachers and their programs in perpetuity. This generous couple’s actions came from a life-long passion for music, and a deep concern that music instruction and performance have all but disappeared in our schools. “We are most interested in helping music teachers and their students. We want them to have the equipment and materials to do their best,” stated Mrs. Wong.
Mr. and Mrs. Wong's long-range goal, and primary purpose of their fund is to encourage community involvement and funding support from local businesses, music teachers, parents, booster clubs, and students. Rose Marie Wong passed away on February 5, 2016. Her legacy lives on through the Donald and Rose Marie Wong Endowment Fund. With the help of the Solano Community Foundation, her philanthropic efforts and those of her husband Donald's, have enriched the lives Solano County school children through music.
Rose Marie Lee Wong, of Vacaville, CA, was a woman of firsts. First-born in a family of seven children, she excelled in school. Growing up in Buffalo, New York, during the depression in a small hand laundry, Rose set the standards for the Lee siblings who all obtained university educations and professional status.
Rose graduated from the University of Buffalo’s School of Pharmacy in 1949 and became Buffalo’s first female hospital chief of pharmacy when she joined the staff at Deaconess Hospital, where she worked for 25 years.
In 1977, after a record snowstorm kept Rose in the hospital, where she slept on the pharmacy’s floor for three days, she decided to move to sunny California.
In 1979, she met and married Donald Wong, and he became her traveling companion. Together they traveled the world, only missing Antarctica. After working at North Bay Medical Center and Vaca Valley Hospital for twenty years as a staff pharmacist, Rose retired in 2010 and began volunteering with the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts at UC–Davis, the Vacaville Performing Arts Theater, and the Leisure Town Travel Club.
Rose loved swimming in Vacaville’s community pool. She and a stalwart group of swimmers met three mornings a week to do one-mile laps. In search of a new challenge, Rose joined a gym in 2013 and Phil Jamison, of Stone Core Ninja Fitness, became her fitness trainer, mentor, and dear friend. Under his guidance, Rose did a 10-minute plank and was learning to box at age 87!
Rose was not a traditional person of faith, but she lived an exemplary and generous moral life. She was outspoken and passionate in her beliefs. In 2011, Rose and Donald, aware of the lack of funding for music in the Solano County public schools, created the Donald and Rose Marie Wong Endowment Fund at the Solano Community Foundation. Rose was a benefactor to many organizations and individuals.
Rose is survived by her husband Donald, stepson Gregory Wong and wife Debbie Fairbanks Wong, five siblings, many nieces and nephews, and countless friends.