Final Push: First Promise Challenge Heads for Finish Line

The First Promise Challenge is expanding the options for earning a $100,000 match for gifts of $100,000 or more to financial aid endowment, comprehensive aid, and internships at Bowdoin.

The original $5 million First Promise Challenge launched in 2021 and resulted in fifty new endowed scholarship funds of $100,000 and fifty matches, a total of more than $10 million in new financial aid endowment.

In November, a group of trustees created a second challenge pool of $5 million. As of April 8, 2024, thirty-nine of the fifty matches eligible in the second challenge have been secured; a match is secured with a gift or written pledge of $100,000 or more payable over up to five years. Matching funds are transferred after the gift is completed.

• The program, which had just included financial aid, comprehensive aid, and current-use internships, will be expanded to include gifts to new and existing endowed internship funds. Funded internships provide a critical form of financial assistance to Bowdoin students. The From Here campaign set a goal of raising $23 million for internships to provide more than 200 annual summer internship awards. To date, $17 million has been raised in endowed funds for internships. Added to prior funded internship endowments, this allows us to grant about 175 internships in 2024.
  
  
• Original donors who took advantage of the challenge in fall 2021 will now be eligible for a second match if they make a second $100,000 gift to their scholarship or comprehensive aid endowment fund.

---

For more information about the challenge, contact Michael Archibald, vice president for development and alumni relations, at 207-725-3670 or marchiba@bowdoin.edu, or your contact in the development and alumni relations office.