Our Story

After growing up in a large, first-generation family on welfare, Margaret Cobb experienced firsthand the challenges of getting off public assistance and becoming self-sufficient. Education seemed to be the ticket to independence. Despite taking advantage of a great curriculum at her public high school, there were still many activities the family simply could not afford such as learning to play an instrument, enrichment classes, sports lessons, etc. To ensure that future students in similar situations might have access to these extracurricular activities, The Cobb Foundation was established to fund and create opportunities for learning and growth beyond the basics.

Inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut

He summed up our mission really well when he wrote:

When I was 15, I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went “WOW. That’s amazing!” And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not good at any of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only doing things if you could “Win” at them.

The Cobb Foundation NW is all about creating wonderful experiences to help grow today’s youth into more interesting people.