A Catholic scholarship program in the Archdiocese of Louisville, Kentucky, that has spent decades providing tuition support for families who want to send their children to Catholic schools is now setting its sights on future generations.

Catholic Education Foundation (CEF) president Richard Lechleiter recently told CNA that he plans to make the organization last for generations by growing its resources through a $100 million capital campaign — the largest campaign in the history of the archdiocese.

Donors have already pledged $80 million of the capital campaign goal.

Lechleiter told CNA that when he looks back on his own childhood — growing up the fourth of nine children — he believes he would have needed the resources his organization now provides to students across the archdiocese.

He said Catholic education was “extremely important” to Lechleiter’s parents. All nine children attended Catholic school, and eight out of nine went to Catholic universities.

“I’m a Catholic school kid,” he told CNA.

While growing up in Louisville, most of the diocesan Catholic schools were staffed by religious orders such as the Dominican sisters, the Ursuline sisters, and the Xaverian Brothers — this helped the schools remain relatively affordable.

“If you fast forward that to today’s world, I would have been a CEF kid for sure,” he said.

After a successful career as an executive of a health care services company based in Kentucky, Lechleiter said he hopes to give back.

“The gift was given to us, and now it’s my responsibility to pay it back,” he said.

The capital campaign is timely, coming months after a school choice ballot referendum failed to pass in November 2024.

Government-funded school choice programs are nonexistent in Kentucky as the state constitution prohibits them.

“We are school choice,” Lechleiter said simply. “We’re the only form of school choice around here, and we have to dramatically increase our funding because the state’s not going to do anything.”

‘The answer is yes’ 

A small team of eight operates the Catholic Education Foundation, which has been providing scholarships for Catholic school families since 1999. 

“The first year, we helped 220 kids with $110,000 of scholarships in ‘99,” Lechleiter said. “Last fall, we hit a record 3,750 kids with $8.3 million — also a record in scholarship funding.” 

That record reflects a doubling in the number of students the CEF supports since just five years ago.

For a decade, CEF has been operating with the motto: “The answer is yes.” 

“That was an invitation for families to come to us, to reach out to us. It was also an inspiration to donors to join us,” Lechleiter explained. “We launched that in 2014, and our numbers have jumped dramatically as a result of it.” 

But Lechleiter said they needed growth. School enrollment was suffering when they launched the motto more than 10 years ago. 

“But we were reaching a point in which more and more families couldn’t afford it,” he recalled. “Some of our school enrollments were really suffering to the point in which you question their existence going forward.” 

But the motto inspired everyone — staff, donors, and families. 

“We’ve really taken off,” Lechleiter said. “Quite honestly, we needed to do that because there were so many more families, the cost was getting to a point, which, as it does in other cities, where a lot of lower income and middle income families can’t afford it.” 

“Every single family that reached out to us that qualified for an award got one,” he continued. “We didn’t turn anybody away in 10 straight years. So that’s the miracle behind this thing.”

“We created that slogan to inspire people, but it’s become a mandate now to fund every family that comes forward, and hopefully we’ll continue that,” he said.

Keeping schools open

CEF plays a unique role because it coordinates with local school awards and archdiocesan awards, meaning that no one gets left behind.

“Because when you close a school, everybody loses,” Lechleiter explained. 

Catholic schools have made an impact in Louisville for a long time. 

“At our height in the ’60s, we had 72 elementary schools, 13 high schools — it was way over 30,000 kids,” Lechleiter said. “People long before me figured out that Louisville is a lot better place to live with more Catholic schools.” 

At St. Rita Catholic School, a parochial school in a working-class neighborhood in South Louisville, CEF supports 92% of students.

“Without our donors, St. Rita’s doesn’t exist,” Lechleiter said. 

At St. Andrew Academy in southwestern Louisville, it’s the same, Lechleiter explained. 

“We fund 94% of the kids in that building,” he said. “Again, without our donors, there is no Catholic school in that neighborhood.” 

The foundation’s launch followed a burst of school closings in the 1970s. But Catholic schools have been on the up and up since, Lechleiter said. 

“Since we kicked off this program 10 years ago, we’ve only had one school closing,” he explained, adding: “Last fall was the fourth year in a row that our school enrollments rose from the previous year.”

Catholic schools around the world have turned out successful students. A recent Australian study based on government data found that people who had attended Catholic schools saw “lifelong benefits” in their employment, health, and general life satisfaction.

But what makes Louisville Catholic schools unique, Lechleiter said, is the high likelihood that graduating students will attend college.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re rich or poor. If you start in kindergarten at any of our schools, and you go all the way through 12th grade in any of our schools, the likelihood that you will enroll in a two-year or four-year college is 96%,” he said. “It’s unheard of.”

Lechleiter said he hopes to grow the organization so that it will endure for future students. 

The foundation’s endowment was originally funded with nearly $16 million by the late Archbishop Thomas Kelly, archbishop of Louisville at the time and founder of the foundation. 

“Our ultimate goal is to get the funded endowment to $100 million,” Lechleiter said. “And then it’ll be sustainable, and it’ll be multigenerational. That’s the beauty of what we’re trying to do.”