ARRL Foundation President Dr. David Woolweaver, K5RAV, announced this week that the non-profit Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) has generously agreed to award a grant to the ARRL Foundation to match the Foundation’s 2020-2021 scholarships on a dollar-for-dollar basis, up to a total of $200,000.

“The ARRL Foundation Board is honored to partner with ARDC to award ARDC’s Amateur Radio Digital Communications’ Brian H. Kantor, WB6CYT, Memorial Scholarship grant for 2020,” Woolweaver said. “These scholarships, made possible by ARDC’s generous contribution, will assist many young amateur radio operators in their pursuit of education at colleges, universities, and graduate schools.”

Last July, ARDC announced it would use the proceeds from its sale of some 4 million unused consecutive AMPRNet internet addresses to fund its operations and to establish a program of grants and scholarships to support communications and networking research — with a strong emphasis on amateur radio. ARDC has said that it intends to award “a total of several million dollars in grants of varied amounts” to qualified beneficiaries, to be used in accordance with ARDC’s mission.

ARDC awarded grants in 2019 and so far in 2020 to several amateur radio-related entities, including a generous award to the Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS), the Foundation for Amateur Radio scholarship program, the GNU Radio Project, TAPR, and the YASME Foundation.

The ARRL Foundation and ARDC are negotiating the terms of for ARDC’s 2021 – 2022 academic year scholarship awards, which will consist of scholarships separate from those the ARRL Foundation already administers

The winners of the ARRL and matching ARDC scholarship awards for the upcoming school year will be announced in the September issue of QST.