Blog - Trajectory Foundation

November 15, 2022

Trajectory Celebrates 5 Year Anniversary If you would have told me in November of 2017 that in five years we'd be celebrating our impact on 16 HBCU students, I would have told you that you were crazy. But I underestimated how our mission would be supported by the incredible generosity of our growing donor community. The Board of Directors and I wanted to mark this occasion with two messages. The first is a simple but profound thank you to all of you who have donated to make this possible. The second is to ask for a few minutes of your time to watch...

September ’22 Newsletter

by Rich Krigger

Newsletters

September 20, 2022

I had the opportunity to attend HBCU Student Recruitment Fairs in Sacramento last week. These are important events put on across California by United College Action Network. These events are so cool - bringing HBCU reps right to high school campuses and the community. Some of the universities do acceptance and financial aid approval onsite! THREE BIG TAKEAWAYS FROM THESE EVENTS Getting to meet potential applicants is unique. I got to spend extended time with a few students who I firmly believe will live enormously impactful lives. This will make the scholarship application and review process very interesting this coming spring. ...

August ’22 Newsletter

by Rich Krigger

Newsletters

August 4, 2022

It is almost back to school time, and as such it is the time of year I send fall scholarship payments to universities. This was the biggest scholarship award cycle in our brief history. 14 scholarship payments across 8 different HBCUs totaling $35,000! I know I say this in every communication, but it is true: The impact of these payments is entirely due to your donations and generosity. Below are highlights of a new student we funded this summer and an open letter thanking Trajectory donors from Shy P., a rising sophomore at North Carolina A&T. The full profile and letter...

April ’22 Newsletter

by Rich Krigger

Newsletters

April 5, 2022

Black History Month is our biggest fundraising month and you all DELIVERED again. Huge thanks to Michelle Johnston Holthaus for the matching program again this year. We raised just under $14,000 total, and with your corporate matching and MJ's matching we will be right around $44,000 for the month. I can't yet see all the donation details so expect an individual thank you notes once I get the detail from Benevity. Thank you to the Sacramento Kings and their corporate sponsor Ankr for making it possible to co-fund a scholarship for Marcellus Carpenter from Grant High School here in Sacramento. The...

Positive HBCU Headlines, but Student Debt Continues to be a Long-Term Weight

by Rich Krigger

Education

November 17, 2021

Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCUs) have long provided strong educations while building rich communities that serve the student long after graduation. Those universities have been in the news and getting more attention in the past 18 months, and for good reason. Massive donations from billionaires like MacKenzie Scott and Reed Hastings to approximately 30 HBCUs have improved the financial security on these universities and surely will have student impact. Corporations like Intel, Fidelity, and Kroger have increased recruiting at HBCUs and increased hiring will build a pipeline of diverse candidates for leadership opportunities in the future. Also, COVID relief funds...

Black History Month (2020)

by Rich Krigger

Education

January 20, 2020

From the outside I am sure I don’t look qualified to write a blog on Black History Month, but in the past five years I have become passionate about increasing my understanding of race and equality in America. That led me to launch a non-profit, Trajectory Foundation, to fund $16,000 college scholarships for black students to attend Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). For me, this journey started during 2014-2016 when multiple incidents resulted in black Americans dying at the hands of police officers. Protests spurned movements like Black Lives Matter. In all honesty, I couldn’t make sense of how this...

Two Perfect Articles

by Rich Krigger

Education

April 18, 2019

Sometimes the universe aligns to help you advance your thinking or solve problems in a way you can’t anticipate. So was the case for me in the past two weeks when two very different articles were written that help me explain, in a more eloquent way than I ever could, why Trajectory is so important to me and why its mission is so critical to the education of young black students who need help funding their college education. The first article, entitled “Privileged” is written by Kyle Korver and was published in The Players’ Tribune. Korver is a white NBA player...

The Original Message from the Founder – November 2017

by Rich Krigger

Education

November 18, 2018

I have been a bystander on social issues. I have had very few conversations about racism and injustice. I guess having a family and living with white privilege makes it far too easy to not pay attention. That silence, that inaction, ends now. Over the past few years I set out to become more educated and engaged in social issues. From that learning comes a very simple truth. Education is critical to change the social inequalities that black children face from the time they are born. But the cost of acquiring a college education is skyrocketing, which further inhibits progress. It...