The Ballard High School Foundation, a charitable organization dedicated to funding school programs like music and sports, will celebrate its tenth anniversary later this month with a benefit concert steeped with Ballard High alumni and community history.

Lifelong Ballard resident and founder of the foundation, C. David Hughbanks, will be honored at the celebration where there will be performances by the Ballard High School Alumni Chorale and headliners The Brothers Four, a folk revival band whose founding member is also a Ballard High graduate.

It's the foundation's largest annual fundraiser, instrumental in keeping the organization afloat, said Janet Rodgers, the director of the non-profit.

"The foundation can't keep doing what it's doing unless we do well with this concert," said Rodgers. "This is the big one."

The concert is also about celebrating the work of the foundation and its contributions to the community and Ballard High students.

The foundation was born in part by the words of Ballard High's student body president back in 1997 before the old school building was demolished for a newer facility.

The community was in debate about how to preserve a building with such rich history and the future of the school was discussed with animosity and a feeling of loss.

But at a meeting before the demolition, the young student body president said, "...Ballard High is about student body, it's not about a building."

This simple statement struck Hughbanks and others who decided to create a foundation dedicated to supporting the future of the school's students.

Since then, the foundation has helped support many efforts at Ballard High, including most recently a new $250,000 greenhouse.

Students were once growing plants in windowsills, but since the greenhouse was completed last spring and after a seven-year effort by the foundation, botany classes now have wait lists.

"That's never happened before," said Rodgers.

The foundation has also raised more than $2 million to support the school's foreign language and drama departments, tutoring programs, music, sports, journalism classes, video production programs and more.

Providing this kind of support is especially important for teens because research shows that students are more likely to stay in school and out of trouble when they are involved in extra curricular activities like music and sports, said Dick Mitchell, the foundation's president.

"Ballard has set the standard in a lot of ways," Rodgers said. "If you want to have a great school, you have to do this (fundraise)."

Most of the foundations' contributions come from annual fundraisers and Ballard business owners, many of whom are alumni like the owners of Ballard Realty, Salmon Bay Sand and Gravel and Olsen Furniture. They stayed in Ballard to raise families and support their community, said Rodgers.

"The Ballard community is really unique," said Rodgers. "It's just been this tremendous support of the community. They have really given back to their alma mater."

The foundation board, which consists of 68 community members, hopes their work will also motivate the students they support.

"The foundation is about preserving the tradition of Ballard High School yet inspiring future Ballard Beavers," said Rodgers. "One of our goals is that as they get older and gain resources they will also contribute to Ballard High. It's trying to create this feeling-all-in-all, amazing."

At the celebration event on April 28 music from Ballard High's past will fill the Earl Kelly Performing Arts Center.

Leading The Brothers Four is founding member and Seattle native Bob Flick. Flick, a Ballard High School graduate class of 1956, formed the group while attending the University of Washington in the 1960s.

The group has performed thousands of concerts all over the world for the past 45 years. They've been called global pioneers in the musical movement of folk revival.

The all acoustic quartet consists of Flick, bass player and singer/songwriter; Mike McCoy, a veteran folk performer and Washington native; John Hylton, solo and group performer, writer and arranger; Mark Pearson, guitarist and banjo player extraordinaire who originally joined the group in the late 1960's along Flick.

The group has sung for the president at the White House and their hit recording of "The Green Leaves of Summer" from the motion picture "The Alamo" was nominated for an Academy Award. They even performed the song at the televised awards ceremony.

The instruments are a blend of guitars, banjo and upright bass. Folk songs from America, Ireland, Scotland, Africa, Japan and China complete an acoustic collection of new and old songs.

Opening for The Brothers Four is the Ballard High School Alumni Chorale, a folk group reminiscent of Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan that began at Ballard High in the mid 1960s. It became a class in 1966 and continued for nearly 20 years.

The group has traveled Europe and sang at the Eisteddfodd in Llangollen, Wales, on Danish radio and Tivoli Garden and at Kibbutzim in Israel. Closer to home, the choir brought its music to Alaska and across the country.

The concert is April 28, 7 p.m. at the Earl Kelly Performing Arts Center, Ballard High School. Tickets are $75 for front row reserved seating and $40 for general admission. They can be purchased through the mail only- call 521-3208 or visit www.bhsfoundation.com.