One School, One Community, One Campus — Completing the Vision Together

Sidwell Friends School has reached an exciting moment in its historic three-phase Together We Shine campaign.

The community has already achieved extraordinary milestones: funding the new Upper School, increasing financial aid, endowing faculty positions, and enabling the creation of the Center for Ethical Leadership and the Center for Teaching and Learning. This final phase will return the Lower School to the Wisconsin Avenue campus and accomplish a long-held goal: one school, one community, one campus. (See Designing a Vibrant Lower School)

“Having all of our students, faculty, and staff on one site will strengthen community, which is the defining concept of Sidwell Friends,” says Head of School Bryan Garman. “The renovation and unification will enable us to strengthen every aspect of our mission. It will improve the learning experience, create a healthy and environmentally responsible physical plant, and provide long-term financial sustainability. I am extremely grateful for the trustees and donors who enabled us to embrace the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to purchase property contiguous to the DC campus.” 

Launching the Campaign’s Culminating Phase

From the start, Together We Shine was designed to be a multi-phase, comprehensive campaign. The first phase, which ran from 2015 to 2022, and the second phase, which concluded on June 30, 2024, raised a combined $159 million in gifts and pledges—nearly triple the amount of any previous Sidwell Friends campaign. The culminating phase officially launched at this year’s Homecoming Weekend. But already, as of that date, the School has raised nearly $190 million—86 percent of our $220 million cumulative goal. That’s thanks to the dedication of early leadership donors, including an anonymous alum who generously pledged a $10 million matching gift to accelerate fundraising efforts. The campaign’s final phase will conclude in June 2027.

As Belinda Nixon P ’17, ’23, co-clerk of the campaign’s culminating phase says, “This final phase matters so much because all of our investments in financial aid, new faculty positions, and facilities only reach their full impact when our whole community can work together as one.”

Campaign committee member Tara Primis P ’18, ’20, ’23 agrees, “The ultimate goal has always been to reunite the entire School on one campus, which is how Sidwell Friends was originally structured. We are so fortunate that we have the opportunity to do this. With a lot of hard work, we are about to get there.”

Excitement is Building

With the goal in sight, longtime campaign volunteer Mara Bralove ’89, P ’26, ’29 says she can’t wait for the Lower School to be in its “phenomenal new home.” Having every member of the School on one campus benefits every member of Sidwell’s community, she says. Faculty and staff will have more opportunities to know each other, to collaborate, and to connect through unplanned, everyday interactions. Younger students can be inspired as they see older peers playing tennis, taking photos, and studying on campus.

“Imagine an Upper Schooler bumping into a 3rd grader on campus and ending up as their reading buddy. That’s the kind of magic that happens when you don’t have to plan every interaction around traffic on Wisconsin Avenue,” says Nixon.

Passing the Leadership Baton

For more than a decade, a stalwart and intrepid Campaign Steering Committee has led Together We Shine. As we transition to the campaign’s last phase, we express our deepest gratitude to co-clerks Jason Carroll ’96, Charis Menschel P ’25, ’27, ’29, and David Milner ’86 for their inspired leadership and welcome them as Honorary Leaders. As incoming campaign co-clerks, board of trustees members Josh Miller
P ’27, ’30 and Belinda Nixon P ’17, ’23 will lead the campaign’s final phase.

“Taking on the co-clerk role felt like a natural step,” says Nixon. “As a member of this community for so long, I have seen the impact a Sidwell Friends education has on our children, and I want to make sure that ripple keeps spreading. Every family we reach, every dollar we raise, means more young people going out into the world with Quaker values embedded in who they are.”

Nixon’s children have already graduated but she continues to devote herself to furthering and strengthening Sidwell Friends. “Our investment in this School didn’t end when our kids graduated,” she says. “If anything, it became more important in a world that feels increasingly divided and complicated. We desperately need more leaders who approach challenges with curiosity instead of certainty, who see collaboration as strength rather than compromise.”

Like Nixon, Primis is also the parent of alumni. “Our three children were able to take advantage of the amazing academic, athletic, and co-curricular activities that Sidwell offers because other community members of past decades invested in the arts center, the meeting room, the music spaces, the athletic center . . . the list goes on,” she says. “Our family believes in paying it forward to the community of families at today’s Sidwell. Supporting the one campus effort over the duration of this campaign is a way we can do that. Our family is excited for the possibility of all that Sidwell Friends will be.”

Investing in Hope

At the other end of the volunteer continuum is Brittany Toscano-Gore ’03, P ’36, ’38 whose children are early in their Sidwell Friends journey. “To join the board at this inflection point–when so much has been accomplished and the horizon is full of possibility–is incredibly energizing,” she says. As a financial aid recipient, Toscano-Gore says her life was changed by people who believed in investing in students they might never meet, and she is inspired by the opportunity to invest in others and invites our community to do the same.

“In moments of uncertainty, people look for anchors–places and communities that remind them who they are and what they stand for,” says Toscano-Gore. “Sidwell is one of those places for me. Yes, it’s a school, but it’s also a community held together by our values, relationships, and purpose. To me, supporting Sidwell is now more than ever about investing in hope, in the belief that education grounded in integrity, inquiry, and service can help shape a better future. That’s why this campaign matters so deeply, and why it feels so powerful to be part of it right now.”

To learn more about the culminating phase of the Together We Shine campaign, please contact Tara Arras, assistant head of school for advancement, at arrast@sidwell.edu.