What is Key Club International?

Key Club International is the oldest, largest, and most successful non-profit student-led organization for high school students. We teach and spread our core values through community service: caring, character-building, inclusiveness, and leadership which was adopted by our Key Club International Board in 2002. Members of Key Club, a part of the community-service-based Kiwanis International Family, develop themselves into young leaders as they positively impact their schools and communities.

Our organization was the inspired vision of California State Commissioner of Schools Albert C. Olney, and vocational education teacher Frank C. Vincent, who together worked to establish the first Key Club at Sacramento High School in California on May 7, 1925. Female students were first admitted into Key Club in 1976, eleven years before women were admitted to Kiwanis International, our sponsoring organization.

Today, Key Club exists on almost 5,000 high school campuses, 35 different countries, primarily in the United States and Canada. It has also grown internationally to the Caribbean nations, Central and South America, and most recently to Asia and Australia. With over 12 million hours of community service a year, Key Club International is an organization comprised of multi-state districts, divisions, and individual Key Clubs on high school campuses around the world. Our organization is funded by nominal dues paid by every member, as well as generous contributions by Kiwanis International to fund service-leadership training programs. Key Club’s district & international officers are high school leaders elected by the members at district and international conventions. Our community-service organization offers a wide range of opportunities to its members, such as by supporting our International Service Partners March of Dimes (funds research to reduce premature births), UNICEF (works to overcome poverty, violence, discrimination, and disease that afflict children around the world), and Children’s Miracle Network (raises funds for more than 170 children’s hospitals).