Last fall, President Teresa Amott challenged 1,000 more members of the Knox community to step forward and make a gift to the College this fiscal year.

Now, as the 1K #forKnox Challenge moves into its final 10 days, the College is still more than 1,300 donors away from meeting that target.

To help close the gap, Larry Stites '63 has just announced that he will give another $100,000 to the Challenge if Knox receives gifts from 8,743 total donors by June 30, 2016.

Stites' gift is on top of an earlier pledge by Chuck Smith '84, who promised in May to give Knox $100,000 if it reaches President Amott's goal. Since Smith's announcement, more than a thousand alumni, parents, faculty, staff and friends have contributed via the 1K #forKnox website.

Stites says that donor participation is one of the most important measures of the strength of an institution like Knox. "This is true of every nonprofit with which I'm associated—it's not how much money you raise, it's how many people get involved. How committed are the people closest to the organization? It's hard to get people to believe that, but it's true."

Stites is a Star donor, having given to Knox every year since he graduated. "While there wasn't a strong fundraising culture on campus then, there was a general awareness that a lot of the people who were there were able to attend Knox because of scholarships and financial aid. So that was an early priority for me."

He sees his Knox experience as transformative and long-lasting. "I agree with so many of the things that other alumni say about Knox: It taught me to think, it exposed me to new people and new ideas that I'd never encountered before, coming from rural Illinois."

All gifts received before midnight on June 30, 2016—whether made online, on the phone, or via the mail postmarked June 30—will count toward the 1K #forKnox Challenge. In addition to the pledges from Stites and Smith, Reid and Jennifer Quinn Broda '94 contributed $15,000 to Knox after 150 parents and 1990s alumni made gifts. To encourage younger alumni to get involved, Nyerere Billups '99 gave $2,500 to the College after 100 alumni from the Classes of 1999 through 2016 made gifts within a single week.  

If Knox succeeds, the Challenge will raise an extra $217,500 for the College, in addition to gifts made by individual donors.