Discover how the grant is helping students who couldn’t afford lessons to learn to swim for the first time.
Swimming is a vital life skill for everyone. Each year, there are 4,000 drowning deaths in the U.S., according to the CDC.
For adults, learning how to swim not only decreases their risk of drowning, but can help protect children by understanding and teaching basic water safety skills.
However, lessons can be expensive and inaccessible. That’s why the USA Swimming Foundation and U.S. Masters Swimming developed a grant program to help universities and other organizations combat that lack of swim experience in adults.
For Kennesaw State University (KSU), the grant has been transformative for the aquatics program.
Being chosen for the program hasn’t been an easy process for the KSU team. The grant, worth up to $5,000, started as part of the U.S. Masters Swimming’s Swimming Saves Lives Foundation. When the COVID-19 pandemic shrank many Masters swimming programs, the organization partnered with the USA Swimming Foundation to provide an adult learn-to-swim program grant.
KSU received its first award in 2019, worth about $3,000, followed by $3,500 the next year. But as the grant changed hands and competition grew, the university went several years without additional funding, even as its own program kept growing.
Cheryl Richardson, the Aquatics program manager at KSU, said a lot of YMCAs and community rec organizations were getting the grants, so she decided to change her strategy.
“I decided to reach out to the KSU Foundation arm, which does all of our philanthropic and fundraising efforts across campus, and we applied through them as a nonprofit,” explained Richardson.
KSU’s Foundation handled the paperwork and helped the campus rec team avoid a lengthy procurement process, a step Richardson said can become an obstacle for campus rec departments applying on their own.
The partnership paid off. In June 2025, KSU learned it would receive about half of the available funding. This year, for the first time, the university received the full $5,000.
The money can only be used for instruction — paying staff and covering lesson fees — not equipment or rentals. Each grant cycle also funds instructor training. Richardson said KSU can send one or two instructors to a specialized adult learn-to-swim certification course.
Last year’s grant money served 42 students who otherwise couldn’t have afforded lessons. This year, the full award is expected to fund lessons for 92 people.
“We have approximately 100 applications so far, and I know that’ll rise in the fall when everybody gets back on campus,” said Richardson.
To qualify, applicants have to be absolute beginner swimmers. The application includes a range of questions such as “Are they already comfortable jumping into deep water?” “Can they float or tread water for a minute?” to help Richardson and her team confirm whether someone truly lacks swimming experience.
Richardson works closely with KSU’s CARES program for students facing financial hardship and veteran services to find individuals who may not have the funding to afford lessons. But the strongest connection has been with the university’s international student office.
“I’d say around 50% to 60% of the students who take advantage of the program are international students who have never had access to or the opportunity to learn how to swim before,” emphasized Richardson.
Over eight lessons, students work toward the American Red Cross water competency standard: jumping into deep water, resurfacing, turning in a full circle, floating or treading for a minute, then swimming 25 yards and exiting the pool unassisted.
The stakes go far beyond the pool deck. According to the CDC, drowning remains the leading cause of unintentional death for children under 4, and non-swimming adults are more likely to raise non-swimming children.
“The more adults that are water competent when watching kids and the more sets of eyes you have on children when swimming, the better,” explained Richardson. “The more people we can make swim, the safer we’re going to be.”
Richardson said many participants go on to enroll their own children in KSU’s youth aquatics lessons, extending the program’s reach a generation further.
“We had one of our divisional leaders who had never learned to swim, and was horrified of the water, take lessons from us,” said Richardson. “Then he signed his children up for lessons from us. We ended up teaching them for about a year and a half afterwards, all of that just off one grant. It’s a great springboard to grow our own swim lesson program.”
KSU is now working to make that impact last beyond the grant’s calendar-year deadline. The university launched its first crowdfunding campaign last year to build a reserve of donations that can extend swim lesson funding once the grant money runs out.
“I’d love to match the grant so instead of 100 people, we can fund lessons for 200. The more, the better,” said Richardson.
KSU’s journey to receive grant funding offers a key lesson for other campus rec departments looking into similar programs: don’t try to do it all alone. Partnering with KSU’s Foundation not only sped up the application process but also modeled how philanthropic offices can share the administrative load that keeps smaller aquatics programs from applying in the first place.
“The adult grant is so important because it can really make your swim program so much richer,” explained Richardson. “It truly opens up your community, making it stronger.”
