Gift Designations

Kenyon offers parents and alumni the opportunity to designate their gifts to one of five critical areas of need. By exercising this option, donors will have a direct impact in the area of their own greatest interest. The eight unrestricted, budget-relieving areas for annual giving are:

Academic Support
Gifts in this area support teaching, learning, and a curriculum firmly grounded in the traditional liberal arts and sciences. Gifts help Kenyon attract excellent professors, maintain a 10:1 student-faculty ratio (and thus keep classes small), expand research and other enrichment opportunities for students, and provide ample, up-to-date resources for laboratories and classrooms. You may designate your gift for a particular major or program.

Area of Greatest Need
Annual gifts in this area give Kenyon the flexibility to direct funds to parts of the budget that need critical, immediate support. Every gift in this category has significant impact, because it results in keeping the Kenyon experience strong across the board.

Athletics and Physical Fitness
Gifts here support the athletic and recreational activities that large numbers of students value and depend on-for health, personal growth, a balanced life, and leadership opportunities. Funds benefit our twenty-two varsity sports (eleven for men, eleven for women), more than a dozen club sports, the popular intramural program, and the ever-expanding fitness and recreational offerings based in the Kenyon Athletic Center.

Campus Preservation and Green Initiatives 
The special character of the Kenyon experience is deeply tied to the College's extraordinary natural environment. Kenyon's campus is recognized as one of the most beautiful in the world, and gifts in this category help keep it that way. Funds go toward maintaining Middle Path along with the College's many gardens, preserving our historic buildings, and protecting the rural character of the lands surrounding the campus.  Gifts to this area also help make Kenyon more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Funds will support a host of projects addressing this increasingly important priority. Among them: electric vehicles, campus wide recycling, the composting of food waste, high-efficiency appliances, sophisticated energy monitoring and control, an energy-generating elevator, low-flow water devices, citrus-based cleaning products. Solar arrays will likely join the list soon.

Scholarships and Financial Aid/Hannah More Scholarship
Gifts here enable Kenyon to hold firm to a fundamental commitment: that qualified students should be able to attend the College regardless of their family finances. Approximately 43 percent of all students at Kenyon receive some form of need-based financial aid. In 2015-16, the average aid package totaled $43,000. Countless Kenyon "success stories" involve students who could not have considered the College without financial aid. Annual gifts make these success stories possible.  A special financial-aid initiative of President S. Georgia Nugent, the Hannah More Scholarship is awarded to first-generation students- that is, students who are the first in their family to attend college. This life-changing scholarship is named for one of Kenyon's earliest benefactors and in keeping with her legacy of leadership.

*We can count gifts in these areas for the Kenyon Fund or Kenyon Parents Fund because they fall into categories of the College's annual budget. By definition, annual-fund gifts are "budget-relieving." Kenyon depends on these gifts: they make up 5 percent of the College's annual budget.

Every gift counts!  Last year, gifts of $100 or less accounted for almost $260,000.  With your help, Kenyon will remain the life-changing college that students and their families cherish.

Giving Societies

*gifts of $2,500 or more are considered Leadership Gifts