Character is best built by community: That much has become clear in the three years since the founding of Wake Forest University’s Educating Character Initiative (ECI), which has served as a foundation for a movement toward character development in higher education across the country. Now, new funding will help the ECI build on that foundation and create new communities of impact to join institutions and ideas from across the United States.

Wake Forest and the ECI have received $8.5 million in a joint grant—$3.5 million from the John Templeton Foundation matched by $5 million from Lilly Endowment Inc.—to organize new communities around specific interests within character education, provide new opportunities for emerging leaders in the field, create and curate resources, advance research on character education, and cultivate a pipeline of both faculty and administrators who can help character become a foundational part of higher education. 

“With the ECI, the Program for Leadership and Character has moved into a new phase,” says Michael Lamb, senior executive director of the Program, of which the ECI is a part. “An important part of our mission now is to maintain this important work for the long haul. Wake Forest continues to prove that leading with character is both possible and worthwhile, and the ECI has helped others start character initiatives on their own campuses in their own contexts. This new support will help create the communities and resources to extend and sustain the flourishing of the movement that has already impacted thousands of lives.”

“This latest award is further recognition of the years of hard work, forward-thinking strategy, and deep commitment to community that have shaped the Educating Character Initiative,” says Wake Forest President Peter Rodriguez. “With the vital support of partners like the John Templeton Foundation and Lilly Endowment Inc., we are even better positioned to sustain and expand this transformative work across higher education.”

“We are excited to support this project, which will increase the number of and connections between scholars studying and thinking about character virtue around the world,” said Sarah Clement, Senior Director of Character Virtue Development at the John Templeton Foundation. “This focus on character in higher education institutions is significant, as character development helps people and communities build the strengths they need to thrive, now and in the future.”

This three-year project is part of a broader shift within the ECI from a project for the community to a community-driven initiative that aims collectively to move the wider character movement in higher education forward. “The current appetite for character education among higher education institutions is extraordinary, and the quality of the work we are seeing across the ECI Community is stronger than ever,” says Jennifer Rothschild, the ECI’s executive director. “Just as the Program has relied on partnerships at Wake Forest, the ECI is striving to use that model to seed communities of impact across higher education, each of which is positioned to promote multi-institutional collaboration and action. This grant will allow the ECI Community to energize and expand the imagination of character education in the United States.”

So far, more than 2,400 people from over 850 institutions and organizations have joined the ECI, which has distributed more than $58 million in grants since 2024, including $23.5 million in 2026. In all, the ECI and its grantees are on track to reach 1.2 million students, faculty, staff, and administrators by the end of the decade.

“We are gratified to see increasing interest from colleges and universities across the country in deepening their work in character education, and we are pleased to be able to support Wake Forest’s effort to strengthen these efforts,” said N. Clay Robbins, Lilly Endowment’s Chairman and CEO.

The new funding will help to create structures that strengthen a growing movement. The ECI will provide $50,000 subgrants for start-up funding that will create small groups of educators from different institutions who will explore specific topics and issues related to educating character in one domain of higher education. In turn, those groups of educators will create and curate public resources such as videos, white papers, best practices, syllabi, and more. They will also host conferences, convenings, webinars, and virtual gatherings. “So far, ECI subgrants have primarily supported teams from individual institutions,” says Rothschild. “This new round of funding supports multi-institutional communities working toward the larger effort of bringing character to the forefront at colleges and universities across the country in a way that’s sustainable and lasting.” 

A further goal is to support emerging leaders and create a pipeline of thinkers and scholars who can become practical educators in the field around the country and at Wake Forest. Funding from the John Templeton Foundation and Lilly Endowment will also allow for the hiring of ECI scholars and support staff to advance this work for the next three years.

“The ECI has helped to provide strong foundations for character initiatives and projects across the country,” says Cristy Guleserian, a former ECI Community member and grantee who joined Wake Forest last year and will now serve as Senior Advisor on Communities of Impact. “We’ve been inspired by what grantees and community members have built over the past three years. What we hope to accomplish in this next phase is to create the structures necessary to allow this ecosystem to thrive long-term.”

“We are grateful for the support of the John Templeton Foundation and Lilly Endowment Inc., and for the ongoing work of so many educators and others in the ECI community,” says Lamb. “We are hopeful that this grant will enable us to advance this movement to put character back at the center of American higher education at a moment when it is desperately needed.”