About The Rampant Lion Foundation
The Rampant Lion Foundation is a qualified section 501(c) (3) charitable organization, affiliated with the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Contributions to the foundation are fully tax deductible, and its income is exempt from federal and state taxation. It is created to fund scholarships for deserving members of the fraternity, to make grants to assist in providing safer housing through installation of smoke and fire alarms, better study facilities and so forth, in Deke houses is in North America, and it can invest its funds in loans to assist in the purchase or improvement of local Deke houses.
The foundation owns a historic building in Ann Arbor Michigan, known as the Shant. Built in the 1870s as a temple and meeting place for local Deke's, the Shant has been continuously owned and occupied for Deke purposes ever since. Today it functions as the headquarters of both the foundation and the fraternity, and its historic second floor is used for ceremonial purposes as well as housing the Gerald R. Ford Library. The library includes in its collection a complete set of the Deke quarterly. Also included are books by and about famous Deke's including Theodore Roosevelt, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Gerald R. Ford. A prized portion of the collection is Gerald Ford's book, inscribed by the former president to the Omicron chapter.
The foundation provides scholarships to deserving members of the fraternity. One such scholarship is the Sebastian Herbstein Memorial Fund Scholarship in Creative Writing . This scholarship is awarded to preserve the memory of Brother Sebastian Herbstein, aspiring young fiction writer and a graduate of Colby College, who passed away June 20, 2002. The scholarship is awarded to a member or descendants of a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity who shares Sebastian's passion for fiction writing and excellence in storytelling. One $1,000 award is given for short fiction
In 2008, the fraternity held what many have described as the most successful by annual convention in many years in Naples, Florida. Nearly 50 Actives from 30 Chapters attended. 30 of them received scholarships. The Foundation sent a special appeal to provide these scholarships and 53 Deke Alumni contributed from $25 to $1,125 for a total of $12,725.00. From these contributions, $9,500 in direct scholarship grants were made to 30 of the attendees. Learn more about the convention on Facebook here.
The remaining funds were expended to procure outstanding speakers from outside the fraternity, including Nathan Holic an English Instructor at the University of Central Florida who spoke on building the relationship between actives and alumni, and David Westol, former Executive Director of Theta Chi, who spoke on Leadership and also gave a strong message on hazing.
In 2007, the Foundation awarded a scholarship (the Rough Rider Award) to Nick Primrose, Lake Forest, in recognition of his outstanding efforts on behalf of the chapter at Lake Forest. Quoting President Theodore Roosevelt, the award said, in part: “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is
no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Linscott R. “Lin” Hanson, a Michigan Deke, class of 1959 became President of the Foundation in April, 2009. Lin is a practicing attorney in Chicago, Illinois. Lin promises to continue in pursuit of the goals of the foundation with a renewed vigor, giving special emphasis to its scholarship activities. He has stated the Foundation will seek to de-emphasize real estate holding, by either sale of the properties to local alumni groups, or transferring management responsibilities to professional house managers or other means. The house at Michigan has been sold, and houses at Yale and Mississippi are pending sales.
Under its new leadership, including an executive committee consisting of the new President and John McNeil, Alabama, and P. Albert Bienvenu, LSU, the Foundation has created a series of new Board committees, including Events, Fund Raising, Scholarships, Grants & Loans, and Chapter Services. The Foundation is actively seeking non-Board member volunteers to serve on these committees.