Our Donors

Dear friends,

As we collectively strive to respond to these extraordinary times, I want to extend to you, your families, your friends and your colleagues my very best wishes. Resilience, compassion, empathy and ingenuity are clearly evident in the way our communities have come together to navigate these uncharted waters, and I have no doubt that many of you are playing key roles in your own circles, both personal and professional, as this situation continues to evolve.

The COVID-19 pandemic has tested each and every one of us.  While the specific impacts may be different, there is no question that we are all managing the same core challenges:  protecting the health and wellness of our loved ones and striving to balance workplace issues, all while balancing these with the need to remain socially and physically distant.

Thank you for making Giving Tuesday such a great success and for supporting KPU students.  On Tuesday, December 1st we invited you to join us in a global movement celebrating the hard work that charities do within our communities.  We shared stories of some KPU students who have benefited from the generosity of donors.  What followed was truly amazing.

Our donors, our alumni, and other members of the communities we serve responded on Giving Tuesday!  Over that 24-hour period, more than $77,000 was raised to support KPU students with financial need.

With the help of our valued donors we increased our Covid-19 student relief funds, student emergency bursary funds, and with the generous leadership of the KPU Alumni Association and their $25,000 matching pledge to alumni on Giving Tuesday, we are able to create a new KPU Alumni Association endowment fund for student bursaries and awards.

We follow Giving Tuesday with Thank You Thursday and we wish to take this opportunity to not only thank those who participated in Giving Tuesday, but to express our gratitude to all of our donors for the generous support you have provided for our students.  This year has been a challenging one filled with adversity and uncertainty.  Regardless of how you give, when you give, or how much you give, please know that you have made a positive and lasting impact on KPU students.  We could not be more grateful.

The Deepak Binning Foundation has established a $200,000 endowment fund for students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. The funds will provide students with bursaries as well as a scholarship for the Punjabi Language and Culture program.  

“Not only do the Binning's support local and provincial causes that matter, but they are also agents for social change,” says Christine Brodie, director of the KPU Foundation.

In honour of B.C. craft beer innovator John Mitchell, the John Mitchell Foundation and Kwantlen Polytechnic University have partnered for the John Mitchell Legacy Endowed Scholarship benefitting brewing students at KPU.

Mitchell passed away earlier this year at the age of 89. He founded Horsehoe Bay Brewing in 1982 and then went on to open Canada’s oldest brewpub, Spinnakers, in Victoria in 1984. Mitchell also helped establish Howe Sound Brewing in Squamish in the mid-1990s.