More than 80 volunteers gathered at Stanford on Tuesday, Aug. 4, to cook and jar over 600 jars of Blenheim apricot jam, continuing a 50-year fundraising tradition that channels proceeds into student financial aid, according to a Stanford Report feature.

The annual Jam Camp, organized by the Stanford Parents' Club, is one of the independent nonprofit's longest-running programs. Volunteers turned fragile Blenheim apricots into preserves now available for purchase at $12 per jar or $144 for a case of 12, with pickup-only orders through the club's website.

The Parents' Club operates on a shoestring. Its annual budget runs $20,000 to $25,000, covering technology, insurance and supplies. It has no paid staff. At the end of each fiscal year, any funds beyond operating costs go directly to the Stanford Scholarship Fund, according to the club's donation page.

That scholarship pipeline has added up. Since its founding in 1924, the club has awarded more than 280 scholarships totaling over $1 million to Stanford undergraduates, according to Stanford's student affairs office. In June 2024, the club reached a milestone: funding three undergraduate scholarships in perpetuity.

The financial aid those scholarships support matters in a city where Stanford's sticker price keeps climbing. Total cost of attendance for the 2026-27 academic year is $97,545, including $67,731 in tuition. About one-third of undergraduate families pay nothing toward tuition under Stanford's policy waiving parental contributions for households earning under $150,000 with typical assets.

The Blenheim apricot itself is a piece of local history. Santa Clara Valley was the center of U.S. apricot production from the 1850s through the 1970s, with output peaking at 160,000 tons annually from nearly 24,000 farms, the Almanac reported in 2023. Blenheims are too fragile to ship commercially, which makes a local jam operation one of the few ways the variety still reaches tables.

The Parents' Club counts more than 10,000 member families across 50 countries. In fiscal year 2023-24, a separate university program, The Stanford Fund, drew $5.5 million from more than 2,500 parents for undergraduate education. The jam sale is a smaller, volunteer-driven complement to that institutional fundraising.

Jars are available at stanfordparentsclub.org.