Challenge nets more than $2 million!

January 13, 2009 – The Oklahoma City Community Foundation is pleased to announce that more than 2,200 individual donors made gifts totaling in excess of $1 million through the John Kirkpatrick Centennial Endowment Challenge. Gifts to individual endowment funds were matched dollar-for-dollar up to $5,000. Of those donors, 1,240 were first-time donors to the Oklahoma City Community Foundation.

In 2008, as part of the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the birth of our founder John Kirkpatrick, the Kirkpatrick Family Fund and the Oklahoma City Community Foundation offered the John Kirkpatrick Centennial Endowment Challenge, a dollar-for-dollar matching grant of up to $5,000 for contributions to participating charitable organization and scholarship endowment funds. Gifts made to the funds between February 1 and December 31, 2008 were eligible and had to be from an individual, foundation or corporate donors and not directly from the organization.

“In addition to increasing the endowments, the goal was to encourage the organizations and scholarship funds to attract new donors,” explains Nancy B. Anthony, executive director. “I believe the numbers speak for themselves as to the success of this Challenge. I think the overwhelming response from donors is a very positive sign for our community.”

Charitable organizations and scholarship funds were invited to participate in the Challenge that could potentially increase their endowments by $10,000. Of the 232 funds participating, 127 reached the full matching level of $5,000.

“All of the funds who participated should be applauded for their efforts,” Anthony adds. “These are the groups who understand the long-term benefit of their endowments. Mr. Kirkpatrick was a tireless advocate of endowments and attracting new donors. I believe he would be quite pleased with the results of the Challenge.”

For a complete list of the charitable organization and scholarship endowment funds who participated in the John Kirkpatrick Centennial Endowment Challenge, please visit www.occf.org/challenge.

-30-