In our work with alumni, we plan events on campus and around the country, including one featuring President Kornfeld in Columbus Sept. 17 which students are invited to join. This fall, you can look forward to Kenyon’s inaugural Women’s Conference in October, when hundreds of graduates will return to hear from their peers — students, faculty and the community are welcome!
We also work to inspire alumni, parents and others who love Kenyon to give to the College. Kenyon runs on this generosity: each year gifts to the Kenyon Fund and Parents Fund help provide financial aid, salaries, campus upkeep, athletics funding and enhance just about every element of the student experience. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, 8,378 people combined to commit $47.1 million to Kenyon! These gifts lessen pressures on our operating budget and help ensure our future financial vitality.
In addition to a wide alumni community eager to provide insight and career connections, including through our networking platform Just Ask, Kenyon is fortunate that so many choose to support this special place, including our endowment. (If this concept is new or fuzzy to you, check out this quick explainer video of a comic made by an alumna in the current alumni magazine.)
Like a 401K, Kenyon’s endowment provides investment income that can be spent each year. By growing the size of this pool, Kenyon will have greater, sustainable, permanent resources. You may notice a new installation over the stairs in the Peirce atrium that recognizes Third Century Founders, donors to the ongoing effort to add $100 million to Kenyon’s endowment by June. We celebrated the first 21 seven-and-eight-figure donors in April, all of them Kenyon alumni and parents who believe deeply in our mission and have faith in our future. (Read more about one of them, George Layburn ’79, and how he began his generosity to Kenyon the year he graduated.)
Evidence of the generosity of this community is all around us, from the named spaces in Chalmers Library to the endowed positions held by select professors to the new alumni-funded turf on McBride Field — with more than 700 unique endowed funds, there’s one for just about everything to love about Kenyon. (Donor funds made the popular travel-embedded courses free to students and support many of the research positions filled by students this summer.)
Today’s students are part of a wider community eager to welcome them. New students were greeted with hand-written notes from the Class of 2026 and alumni, thanks to a project coordinated by the Generosity Project. This is just one small sign of the care and power of the Kenyon network: alumni who remain invested in Kenyon long after they leave the Hill and are rooting for this place and today’s students from all corners of the globe. It’s a privilege to help forge more connections and support among everyone with fond memories of walks to class down Middle Path.
Sincerely,
Keith DiDonato
Vice President for Advancement
