As soon as Lauren Von Mingee heard the phrase “irrational generosity” in a sermon five years ago, there was no turning back. Before long, she and her husband, Leo Mingee, made a life-changing commitment to being irrationally generous. 

First-generation students at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business will be among the beneficiaries of this decision.

With a $6 million gift to the OU Foundation, the entrepreneurs and philanthropists created the Mingee-Von First-Generation Business Scholars Fund. 

“This is something that really came out of a calling,” Lauren recalls of the moment she heard those words.

“I leaned over to my husband and said, ‘What can we do? Can we give away half of our revenue?’ ” Though Leo quickly reminded her margins don’t work that way, the pair settled on giving away half of their profits—and stayed committed to that promise even as the 2020 pandemic disrupted business just weeks later.

“It doesn’t matter whether we’re making $10,000 in profit a month or $2 million—we’re going to give away half,” Lauren says. “Once that became a core value, we just continued to have unprecedented favor in what we were doing. We’re redefining what corporate responsibility looks like to us.”

The new fund is the largest scholarship endowment for first-generation students at OU. It will offer sustained, multi-year support.

Their gift to OU stems from a shared desire to eliminate financial barriers and open new opportunities for students like Lauren once was—ambitious, driven, but without the resources to complete the degree she sought. 

When she learned that some OU students had abandoned their degrees because of an inability to pay a $1,000 bill, she was shocked, but could relate. “There have been times in my business where I was $1,000 away from closure,” she says. 

The Mingees hope their scholarship will not only ease students’ financial burdens, but also encourage them to plant roots. “We don’t want graduates to go to Texas,” Lauren says. “I want them to invest back in Oklahoma and launch their ideas here instead of another state.”

Their gift contributes to the university’s $2 billion Lead On fundraising campaign, which includes an effort to raise $500 million to bolster student support. Some $327 million of that has already been raised.

Remarkably, the Mingees are both under 40 and wasted no time in implementing their philanthropic vision. 

“We want to see the impact and the ripple effect today, not whenever we pass away,” Lauren says. “We have five kids and we want them to share that value—blessing people and seeing the impact.” 

Sara Morrell Cowan is assistant editor of Sooner Magazine.

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