HISTORY
In 1990, the Bonner Foundation launched the first Bonner Scholars Program in partnership with Berea College in Kentucky, also signaling a commitment to rural Appalachia. Designed to provide students with “access to education and an opportunity to serve,” the program has grown to become the largest privately-funded, service-based college scholarship program in the country. The scholarship provides students with high financial need (defined as Pell eligible) and an ethic for service with four-years of financial aid support and an opportunity to participate in an intensive cohort experience. With the addition of AmeriCorps Education Awards in 1997, the Bonner Leader Program enabled other campuses to replicate the model, using other resources like Federal Work Study. Collectively, the Bonner Programs at more than 60 campuses nationwide now engage roughly 3,000 students annually. Today, the Bonner Program continues to provide campuses with a viable model that supports the successful enrollment, retention, and graduation of low-income, first generation, and diverse students.
MISSION
“Access to education, opportunity to serve.”
The founding mission for the Bonner Program is to provide diverse low-income, underrepresented, and first generation students with the opportunity to attend college, while engaging their talents and education in building and supporting communities. Through sustained partnerships with colleges and congregations, the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation seeks to improve the lives of individuals and communities by helping meet the basic needs of nutrition and educational opportunity.
The Bonner Foundation believes that colleges and congregations have vital roles to play in society in nurturing and mobilizing thoughtful, caring, and diverse leadership dedicated to community service. They recognize that often the best way to help someone is to give them the opportunity to help themselves, and that the people best able to address a problem are the people whom it most directly affects. The Foundation also recognizes that effective community service programs involve all stakeholders in their leadership and creates innovative programs that have the potential to serve as models for the field.
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