Sauk Valley Community College’s Amboy Clippers Impact Challenge has received a challenge of its own.

An anonymous donor recently pledged a $10,000 matching grant to match all donations to the Clippers Impact Challenge, up to $10,000, through April 1.

“The donor is someone who is committed to not only Amboy but Sauk Valley Community College. This is an amazing opportunity for the Amboy community to have the dollars they donate to the Clippers Impact Challenge go further,” said Lori Cortez, vice president of advancement at SVCC.

The donations have to be secured by April 1 - a significant date for the SVCC Impact Challenge.

“April 1 is our sign-up date for eighth-grade students for the Impact program, so we are hoping to secure the $10,000 match by then,” Cortez said.

The additional funds will go toward meeting the Amboy Clippers Impact Challenge goal of raising $600,000. The Amboy program was announced late last year and in the first 60 days, has raised $30,000, excluding the $10,000 matching donation.

“We started a fundraising campaign to raise a $600,000 endowment that will allow every single student who graduates from Amboy High School the opportunity to earn their tuition and fees through the Impact program at Sauk,” Cortez said.

In a meeting held at the Long Branch Saloon in Amboy in November 2025, SVCC officials explained the Impact program and announced the Amboy challenge.

“The Amboy Clippers Impact Challenge is a $600,000 campaign that is supporting all of the Impact students in Amboy in perpetuity,” Cortez said.

A similar Challenge campaign was completed in Polo, and another is finishing up in Morrison.

Cortez said there are 92 students from the Amboy and Sublette area in the Impact program.

“As of November, those students had completed over 5,000 hours of community service,” Cortez said.

Another feather in Amboy’s cap is that one of the volunteer organizations, Teen Turf in Amboy, is the top provider of volunteer hours for Impact students.

“Teen Turf provides more volunteer opportunities for students than any of the other 300 nonprofits in our area,” Cortez said.

The SVCC Impact program started in 2022. The fundraising goal was $10 million, which will fund tuition and fees for students in the program. To date, the program has raised $8.2 million.

Since the program started, students enrolled in the Impact program have performed 100,000 hours of volunteer work for nonprofit groups and organizations in a six-county region that encompasses the SVCC district.

The first group of Impact students enrolled at SVCC for the 2025-26 college year.

“We are proud to say that 80% of those students are majoring in high-demand fields that are local high-demand fields, like health professions, agriculture, manufacturing and education. So when someone invests in the Impact program, they are not just investing in a student scholarship, which is amazing; they are also investing in the local workforce,” Cortez said.