Our mission is to create scholarly (educational) and scholarship (financial) opportunities in which participants of all levels have a fair and equal chance to participate and be successful.

At CKSF we are creating an environment where learning is a fun by-product of what our participants really want; recognition, competition, instant feedback, and most of all easy money.

"We reward students for demonstrating what they know!" Developed and administered at Nova Southeastern University, the Common Knowledge Scholarship Foundation (CKSF) awards scholarships through the use of internet-based quiz competitions. Each scholarship consists of one or more quizzes with topics that range from common knowledge to specific academic subjects. The primary focus is to have an objective competition that rewards students who have well-rounded, practical knowledge, and not necessarily those with the highest academic standing. There are no essays or long applications to complete and a single CKSF registration is good from high school all the way through college and graduate school.

New scholarships become available for participants on a monthly basis. Upcoming scholarships are announced 15-30 days in advance of the quiz start date. Quizzes are available 24 hours a day and generally for one week. Some of the most popular CKSF scholarships are: The National Nursing Scholarship, The Bible Scholarship, and The CKSF Movie Scholarship, just to name a few.

The first Common Knowledge Scholarship was created in January of 2000 for high school students in Norway, Michigan. The goal was to find a way in which all students would have a fair chance at winning the scholarship, unlike most programs that routinely favor students who are the strongest academic performers. The scholarship was based on well-rounded practical knowledge, rather than textbook and classroom material, hence, the "Common Knowledge" scholarship was created.

Since that first scholarship in 2000, CKSF has developed a wide variety of scholarships in which high school, college, graduate students and even parents can participate. Much of the current success can be credited to scholarships based on the Miami Dolphins and FBI websites along with the use of Fastweb.com and Scholarship.com.

Each year CKSF helps more businesses, foundations and individuals administer scholarships as they find out that they can sponsor a scholarship based on a specific topic without having to read thousands of essays. CKSF has had the privilege of administering scholarships on behalf of the FBI, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE), the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation, California Police Youth Charities and many more.

The popularity of the high school and college scholarships has taken CKSF in some unexpected directions. After the success of the first FBI Challenge, we teamed up with the Miami FBI Crimes Against Children unit to develop the FBI-SOS (Safe Online Surfing) Internet Challenge. FBI-SOS is an internet safety program designed to help middle school students learn about the dangers associated with internet chat rooms, email, instant messaging and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. The program was adopted by the FBI in 2005 and a formal partnership was established between the FBI and Nova Southeastern University's Fischler School of Education and Human Services. Working together we are educating elementary and middle school students across the nation about online safety.

Beginning in the fall of 2007, CKSF launched the High School Internet Challenge, a tournament-style academic quiz competition that turns high school subjects into fun team competitions and scholarship opportunities. Each week students in sponsored counties take online quizzes trying to gain nationwide recognition for their school and advance themselves to the National Scholarship Round. The High School Internet Challenge rewards high school students for learning the material taught in their classes while engaging professionals to support education in their communities.

Since that first scholarship in 2000, CKSF has developed a wide variety of scholarship and academic enrichment programs for students of all ages. Today, CKSF administers several new contests each month and is growing at a rate of approximately 1,000 new students per day.