August 2026
First cohort gathering: planning in progress
We are planning the Foundation's first cohort gathering for early November, in Boulder. Date, venue, and format are still being worked out, and we will announce them here once they are settled rather than before.
What the evening is for is already settled. Cohort gatherings are the third of our three pillars, and they are not ceremonial. Scholarships get funded and founder grants get awarded because a group of people stayed in the same room once a year and kept deciding to. The gathering is where that decision gets made, and it is the clearest difference between a foundation and a mailing list.
If you have not yet told us how to reach you, please do. Details go first to the people on the roster.
July 2026
Finding the Class of 2026
Graduation scatters a class. Within weeks, people move states, change employers, and drop the school email address that everyone had been using to reach them. An institution that intends to serve a class first has to be able to find it.
This month we worked with the Leeds School of Business to reach the full Class of 2026 across the full-time, professional, and executive tracks. We are grateful to the school for its partnership, and especially to Lydia Supplee and John Helmers, whose help made the introduction possible. Classmates were asked to share current contact information and to tell us how they might want to be part of this work — as founding members and donors, as mentors and reviewers, on a committee, or simply by staying close as it grows.
This is unglamorous work and it is the precondition for all of the rest of it. There is no scholarship program, no founder grant, and no annual gathering without a class that can be reached — and no foundation worth building without people who want to help build it.
June 2026
Founding membership opens
This month we opened founding membership to the Class of 2026, with a close on June 30. Founding members are the people who put resources behind the three pillars — graduate scholarships, founder grants and fellowships, and cohort gatherings — at the point when there was nothing to point to but intent.
The window was short on purpose. An organization that means to outlast its founders needs a first group willing to commit on conviction rather than on evidence, and it needs to know who that group is. That list is now closed and recorded.
Our application for recognition of exemption under Section 501(c)(3) remains pending with the IRS.
April 2026
2026 Foundation is officially incorporated
Today is a quiet milestone we'll remember for a long time: 2026 Foundation, Inc. is now officially recognized as a Colorado nonprofit corporation, and we've received our federal Employer Identification Number from the IRS.
It's a small thing on paper — a filing number, an EIN on a letter. But it's the moment an idea held by a group of Leeds MBA classmates becomes a real legal entity, with the structure and accountability that any serious institution needs.
There's still important work ahead. We'll be filing our Form 1023 with the IRS to apply for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status in the coming weeks, so that we can begin accepting tax-deductible contributions. We're also finishing up our founding board, our governance documents, and the first draft of our giving guidelines.
But today, the thing we wanted to build exists. The 2026 Foundation is real.
Thank you to everyone who has listened, encouraged, questioned, and helped shape this during its earliest weeks. You know who you are.
— The Founding Team
