Winsor Leads Fall '26

The tradition of giving—of time, expertise, and financial support—has been fundamental to the Winsor School since 1907, when a group of early supporters first formed the Winsor Corporation and the Winsor Board of Trustees. These prescient parents and supporters understood that building a legacy of giving and an endowment would add structural strength and encourage the kind of steady evolution to keep the school relevant in an ever-changing world. While tuition-based funding had allowed Mary Pickard Winsor’s school to continue and grow in modest ways for its first two decades, the possibilities expanded exponentially with a system in place that encouraged the cultivation, allocation, and use of financial contributions, grants, and gifts.

“Philanthropy is quite simply an integral part of the Winsor operation,” says F. Warren McFarlan P’92, Albert H. Gordon Professor of Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard Business School. It “is the absolute lifeblood of a nonprofit,” he shared. “Without securing financial giving, the physical and curricular backbones of the school cannot stand tall; it is hard to expand on and grow the programs and facilities that set your school apart.”

Warren, whose daughter Elizabeth ’92 graduated from Winsor (his mother Ethel Warren McFarlan ’26, and his sister, Ethel McFarlan Hamann ’58, also attended), was a Harvard Business School faculty member from 1962 to 2018. As its first information technology appointment, he made significant impact with his early adoption and promotion of information technology in the Harvard Business School’s teaching programs. For over two decades, he also studied and wrote about the developing global influence of China’s economy. Social enterprise was an additional subject of study and intense interest—he has spent 37 consecutive years serving on secondary school boards, including those of Winsor and Milton Academy (his alma mater), as well as those of hospitals, religious organizations, and museums. He and his wife Karen have given generously to Winsor—they have supported every major campaign in the school’s history—establishing funds and supporting initiatives throughout his years of involvement. 

Warren’s dedication is based in philanthropic interest, but he is also fascinated by what has become a lifelong study on how nonprofit boards function—and how they can function well—tending to the needs and goals of an institution. His accrued knowledge has enabled him to not only directly contribute to numerous groups, foundations, and corporations, but also to write on the subject. 

“With a school like Winsor that understands its mission, the board is responsible to the students, the faculty, and the alums in terms of its progress towards mission fulfillment,” Warren says. “You’re making hiring choices to find the people who can shape the school and move it forward. A lot of discussion needs to take place. The board is also responsible for raising financial resources to support investment in staff and assets. Development is what allows you to execute.” 

“When my daughter was in school, I was glad to head up the Annual Fund,” Warren shares. “The trustees agreed we needed a board that was a little more receptive to development. If we added every year for several years one development-oriented trustee, it would constructively change the discussion. So we did that and it was very effective. The addition of these trustees also helped other trustees feel more comfortable ‘making the ask.’ You have to have people who can explain the ways individuals can make an impact on the institution. You have to find the right kind of donors for the right kind of projects. Infrastructure, for example, is a hard thing to raise money for, but it is absolutely necessary. I can think back to one instance when the first project I had to address on a school board was paving the parking lot for safety reasons. As you can imagine, there was not a lot of enthusiasm on the part of donors for this project, no matter how vital it was. That’s where you have to have people on the board who can find support and resources for these essential, not glamorous, expenditures. There is an art to it. Winsor has been able to do this over a long time.”

Warren and Karen are enthusiastic advocates for the Winsor Leads campaign priority of increasing student support. From its earliest days, Winsor has strived to enroll a socio-economically diverse population. Its current campaign seeks to further that legacy by “welcoming the most qualified students to an increasingly equitable and inclusive community.” By expanding Winsor’s financial aid budget, the school is supporting the admission team to focus their outreach on the most extraordinary girls in and around Boston, regardless of financial means. Additionally, expanded financial aid resources allow the school to ensure that every student has the opportunity to experience all that the school has to offer.

“I applaud the various initiatives that Winsor has put in to build socio-economic diversity,” Warren says, referring to the student body, the faculty, and the staff. When asked about his family’s financial commitment to Winsor Leads, he adds, “We hope to provide extra resources to help facilitate the process that Winsor already intends. You have to say, ‘I’m going to be socio-economically diverse,’ and then be able to operationalize it. There need to be seminars, lectures, a new mix of hires, et cetera. These resources are intended to support where the head of school is trying to lead Winsor on that ‘softer’ part of education. It is easier to think about science buildings and such when giving funds, but this is just as critical.

“I lived this experience as a faculty member. Implementing these kinds of changes was an important part of my life at the Harvard Business School. I saw Winsor had worked to address effectively these issues in its environment…so I wanted to provide resources that would allow Winsor to continue to succeed in that domain.”

Warren speaks of the time he has given to board service with both conviction and openly stated affection. Helping to establish sustainable, highly functional systems of institutional governance and support is his avocation.

“Each board I have been on has added to the tapestry of what I’ve learned about nonprofit governance,” he acknowledges. “It was part of my intellectual odyssey.”

But how did the Winsor School get so lucky as to secure three decades of not only Warren’s time expertise, but his family’s consistent and significant financial support? 

It begins, of course, with his mother and his sister, who he says both spoke so highly of their time at Winsor that when it came time for his daughter Elizabeth to find the right secondary school, 103 Pilgrim Road seemed an ideal place to start. 

“We have actually had somebody in the school under the first six heads,” he remarks with a laugh. “That only changed when we stopped producing daughters.” (Warren notes he is very proud of his two grandsons.)

He knew Winsor was the right fit for Elizabeth from the beginning, when over family meals he found her making independent decisions about her best path forward at the school. In the ensuing years, he watched as those decisions yielded change, maturity, and confidence. It is this, he emphasizes, that has led to him continuing to give.

“It is very simple,” Warren states with the same assurance and depth of understanding he gives his various subjects of expertise. “Winsor set my youngest daughter on a different path. It was deeply transformative. The key to her success at Winsor, and later in life, started with decisions made on her first day of Class V. Her experience on the crew team [and] in an academically challenging environment changed her expectations. Winsor opened the door to imagining new horizons and goals. She had just a tremendous experience at Winsor.” ●