UNCF mourns the passing of Donald Fisher, the benefactor and board chair of the KIPP Foundation, who died on September 27. We extend our condolences to Mr. Fisher's wife and business partner, Doris Fisher, and to their family.

Don Fisher was one of the most influential figures in American education. But he wasn't a teacher, principal or school superintendent. He was the founder of The Gap and one of the nation's most important philanthropists, and he brought to education reform the same dedication and entrepreneurial spirit that built his business from a single location to a 3,100-store chain.

The UNCF community knew Don Fisher best as the philanthropist whose $75 million investment enabled the KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) public charter schools to grow from two middle schools in New York and Chicago to a network of 82 schools, most in low-income and minority neighborhoods. UNCF president and CEO Dr. Michael L. Lomax serves on the KIPP Board of Directors.

"Don Fisher's life and work were a gift to all of us who were privileged to know him and to the millions of Americans who have been touched by the education reforms made possible by his generous support," Lomax said. "To serve with Don on the KIPP Board of Directors was to get an education in how the lessons of a lifetime in the business world could help teachers teach and students learn. We miss him already."

KIPP is based on the belief that every child needs a college education and the conviction that every child is capable of attending college and graduating. KIPP schools have longer school days and longer school years. KIPP teachers are available by cell phone to students and their families after school and on weekends.

The college pennants and posters that decorate the walls of KIPP schools are only the most visible indications of KIPP's determination to instill in students a belief in their own potential for college. Ask KIPP middle-schoolers when they'll graduate, and they'll tell you, not the year they'll graduate from eighth grade or even high school, but the year they'll graduate from college.

KIPP's methods pay off in results: 85 percent of the students who graduate from KIPP middle schools go on to attend college.

Don Fisher was a leader in a new kind of social philanthropy. He brought to KIPP not only the resources that made its expansion possible, but the wisdom and insight of his decades in business. Like successful businesses, KIPP and other social entrepreneurial ventures are outcomes-oriented and data-driven, constantly adjusting their methods and approaches in the light of experience and results.

KIPP was not Don Fisher's only education investment. He was a major supporter of another UNCF partner, Teach For America, which places recent college graduates as teachers in underserved public school systems. He also supported GreatSchools.net, the on-line resource that enables parents to find the best schools in their communities.

"I decided education was the thing that was most important to me," Don Fisher once said. "I think of education in this country as the most serious social problem we have today. If we aren't competitive intellectually, we're going to lose in the world economy."

The loss of Donald Fisher will be keenly felt by all of those whose lives he touched. But he leaves behind a living legacy: the growing network of KIPP schools, the highly-motivated young Teach For America teachers who are energizing thousands of American classrooms, and the tens of thousands of students who will get the education they need and deserve because Donald Fisher cared.