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For the first time in its 83-year history, the Kresge Foundation has extended its eligibility standards for the Challenge Grant to community colleges. The eligibility change recognizes the pivotal role community colleges now play in educating low-income and non-traditional students.

“With our country’s ever-widening gap between rich and poor, Kresge’s Board of Trustees believes that if we are to fulfill our mandate to serve humanity we must battle against these trends,” says William F. L. Moses, senior program officer and head of the Education team. “Obtaining a college degree has long been a path out of poverty and into the middle class, and it is even more important in this era of globalization.”

The Kresge Foundation has consistently supported higher education, including state universities, liberal arts colleges, Ivy League universities, and the full-range of special mission and faith-based institutions, including Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

“What has become an increasingly important first step on this path is the community college,” Moses says. “As a result, the foundation is now welcoming challenge grant proposals from accredited associates-degree granting institutions.”

The challenge grant, Kresge’s signature grantmaking tool, awards a nonprofit organization a financial grant if it raises an agreed upon amount of funds from private sources. The program has assisted communities across the country build schools, libraries, museums, hospitals, community centers and other brick and mortar projects.

In 2007, the foundation began an expansion of its grantmaking to better serve the pressing issues in society. Nine values, which include creating opportunity for low-income people, reflect its strategic priorities and focus its grantmaking decisions.

For more information, visit the Challenge Grant and Our Values Criteria.