$50,000 prize enriches Liberty Fellowship’s impact

Hayne Hipp is at it again.

The former chairman and CEO of Liberty Corp. is pushing another effort toward making South Carolina a better place.

The Liberty Fellowship, the statewide leadership program launched in 2004 by Hipp, has announced it will award a $50,000 annual Liberty Prize to one of its fellows’ class projects.

Hipp, The Aspen Institute and Wofford College started the Liberty Fellowship program to inspire value-based leadership among S.C. leaders ages 25-45.

“We now have 80 fellows actively putting the principles they’ve learned into practice through community leadership projects,” Hipp said. “As the impact of these projects reverberates across South Carolina, we want to raise the bar even higher by offering a prize (that) serves as both reward and incentive for fellows and that has a profound impact on one of the many deserving projects.”

None of the money goes into anyone’s pocket, Hipp said. The prize enhances and sustains the winning fellow’s project.

Each year 20 young leaders are chosen from among a couple of hundred nominees to participate in the two-year program.

As part of the program, each fellow must undertake a community project. Some of the projects to date have included:

• Holding a three-day mini-Liberty Fellowship program for newly elected state legislators.

• Working on an accreditation program for Spanish interpreters in the state court system.

• Establishing a community foundation in Florence, the only major city in the state without such a foundation.

• Compiling a history of prominent African-Americans from South Carolina.

One of the projects from each class will now receive a $50,000 prize. The first Liberty Prize will be awarded Jan. 26 at the Liberty Fellowship Reunion in Greenville.

Funds for the prize will come from the same source as funding for the Liberty Fellowships, a privately funded foundation in South Carolina, Hipp said.

Not all of the projects in every class will be eligible for the prize, said Jennie Johnson, executive director of the Liberty Fellowship. Fellows must apply for the prize.

Projects must be durable, scaleable and capable of being replicated, Johnson said. The fellows “see the project as their first legacy to the state,” she said.

The winning community leadership project must:

• Have a significant impact on the citizens of South Carolina.

• Exhibit a commitment to continue into the foreseeable future.

• Serve as a model for other organizations, communities, states or nations.

• Have the potential for significant expansion or enhancement.

• Be operational for at least one year.

The winning project will be chosen by a jury of fellow peers from finalists selected by a committee of the Liberty Fellowship board of directors in November.

Liberty Fellowship participants meet in seminars four times a year that revolve around the study of classic texts using the Socratic method. They also attend the Aspen Institute’s Executive Seminar, a weeklong commitment. The program is modeled after the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship.

Since the sale of Liberty Corp. in 2005 to Raycom Media, Hipp has focused much of his attention on the Liberty Fellowship program.

Liberty Corp., which owned 15 television stations, was sold for about $1 billion. The company had previously sold its insurance business — Liberty Life and Liberty Insurance Services — to Royal Bank of Canada for $650 million.

The Raycom deal alone put a little more than $103 million in Hipp’s pocket.

At the time of the sale Hipp said the bulk of the money would go toward helping South Carolina become a better place. He has been true to his word, using the money to create and fund the Liberty Fellowship program and now adding the $50,000 annual prize.