Lilly Endowment grants $45.5M to boost character development at American Camps

Friday, February 2, 2024

The American Camp Association® (ACA) is pleased to announce a significant development: a generous grant of $45,535,623 from Lilly Endowment Inc. This grant will play a crucial role in supporting a new and expansive initiative aimed at fostering character development in camps throughout the United States.

Titled “Character at Camp,” this innovative program is grounded in the belief that summer and year-round camp experiences present unparalleled opportunities for shaping the character of young individuals. Despite the diversity in missions, sizes, activities, and locations of camps, many inherently focus on youth development and building character skills and traits. The ACA’s recent National Camp Impact Study highlighted the positive impact of camp experiences, demonstrating the promotion of social connectedness and the development of enduring skills such as perseverance, responsibility, and a willingness to embrace new challenges. These skills, as evidenced by the study, persist over time, with individuals who attended camps displaying them throughout academic and early career environments.

Character development has been an integral aspect of the camp experience for over a century, as camps uniquely offer diverse opportunities for nurturing crucial character skills and traits. Camps provide young people with immersive, less-distracting environments, often in natural settings, facilitating character development through social interactions, reflection time, and various activities. For instance, campers learn responsibility by setting tables in dining halls, exercise leadership during group hikes, and practice empathy by supporting fellow campers missing home.

In the contemporary world, the significance of developing character skills and traits such as gratitude, kindness, creativity, curiosity, perseverance, resiliency, empathy, courage, and teamwork cannot be overstated.

The Character at Camp initiative is scheduled to span the next six years. ACA will offer in-person and virtual training, educational tools, and resources to over 15,000 year-round and summer camps across the US to enhance, expand, or establish character development programs. As a direct outcome of this initiative, ACA will engage camp leaders in educational and peer-learning opportunities, networking, training, and other experiences aimed at facilitating character skill and trait development at camps. Collaborating with camp professionals, youth-development experts, and others, ACA will create new educational resources, training programs, and assessment tools to empower camps in embracing this crucial initiative.

Beginning in 2025, eligible nonprofit camps will have the chance to apply for competitive grants ranging from one to three years to support their character development programs. Grant amounts, based on the grant period, will range from $50,000 to $300,000. These funds can be utilized for staffing, training, curricula, assessment, communications, and/or outreach and partnership efforts to align with camps’ specific goals related to character development. The initiative aims to support a diverse array of camps catering to young people from varied backgrounds, including under-resourced and underrepresented youth. Additionally, it will allocate funds for developing character-based programming that is culturally relevant and values the diverse perspectives of youth and families.

“We are deeply grateful for Lilly Endowment’s support of ACA and our shared commitment to support camps across the country with the funding, tools, resources, and education to expand and prioritize character development programs,” said Tom Rosenberg, ACA president/CEO. “This Character at Camp initiative recognizes the diverse needs of children and youth. We know camp experiences build a world of belonging and growth, and we’re excited to engage camps as they work to strengthen their character development programs.”

“Lilly Endowment’s founders firmly believed that developing the character of young people was vital to the future of communities and our country, and they supported many efforts to understand how character is formed,” said N. Clay Robbins, Lilly Endowment’s chairman and CEO. “For decades, well run camps have had a positive impact on the character development of thousands of campers. We believe, with the commitment, leadership, and expertise of ACA, its Character at Camp initiative can meaningfully enhance and expand character development from a variety of perspectives and in a diverse array of young people throughout the nation.”

« Back to Page