As 2023 draws to a close, the Mercatus Center’s annual fundraising campaign is in full swing.
Your donation helps to support our student fellowships, which are near and dear to my heart. One of these programs brings promising young men and women to study graduate-level economics full-time at George Mason University’s Department of Economics; other of these programs bring other students – graduate and undergraduate – to regular seminars featuring GMU’s unique market-process approach to economics. Each program is highly competitive, with an average acceptance rate of just 15 percent. Every year we must turn down promising students because we simply don’t have the capacity to support them all. Your gift (tax-deductible, of course) increases the odds that in 2024 we can open up spaces for more students.
It’s difficult to overstate the difference a Mercatus fellowship can make in a student’s career trajectory and intellectual journey. As one of our Don Lavoie fellows recently shared:
I joined the Don Lavoie Fellowship hoping to learn new concepts and reorient myself with the help of an academic circle. The Fellowship delivered on that and much more. Thank you for your tireless efforts to engage so many of us over the past few months. As the year draws to a close, I have been contemplating applying myself more towards academics and broadening my horizons through a PhD. This increased confidence can largely be attributed to the Fellowship. Thanks to your constant support, I have started viewing learning in a new light. A light where I’m kinder to myself for not knowing things, yet curious and excited to apply myself without second-guessing my abilities. Just wanted to write and let you know the impact you and your efforts have made.
If you’d like to contribute a special year-end gift to make more of these “Aha!” moments happen, you can do so here. Your support, in any amount, is very much appreciated. And it will, please be assured, improve the climate of ideas in ways that better secure prosperity, peace, and liberty – ideas to which my late, great colleague Walter Williams (pictured above) dedicated his life.
A final note: Although affiliated with George Mason University, Mercatus accepts from government no funds or in-kind contributions. None whatsoever.
Again, you can contribute here. Thank you!
