The mission of the Elks National Foundation is to help build stronger communities. Racism and intolerance actively damages and threatens communities, ours included. We will not tolerate any language or actions deemed as such.

At the Elks National Foundation, on the Scholar Advisory Board and in our Elks scholar family, Black lives matter, our Black scholars matter, and their safety, their wellbeing, their happiness, matters. The ENF is committed to making all our spaces fully inclusive, equitable, and safe for all our members, especially those who are people of color. Words and actions matter. We are taking actionable steps to ensure the inclusivity of our Elks scholar family, starting with:

• We will work to build racial equity training into our programming.

• We will update our scholarship code of conduct to include specific language on the use of hate speech and discrimination.

• We have created a feedback form that will allow our scholars to voice any concerns, grievances, or past instances with racism or prejudice in Elks’ spaces. You can choose to list your name or leave it anonymous.

It is clear that actions such as these should have been implemented sooner. We hope that anyone hurt by racist, bigoted, or homophobic words or actions can find spaces to heal as we put in the work to make the Elks family a more inclusive space for all Elks scholars.

If you have any questions, concerns, or just wish to talk about these issues, please reach out. Truly, we are here for you if you need us, just email scholarship@elks.org

--Scholar Advisory Board

--ENF Scholarship Programs