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In April 2000, AU senior Kimberly Williams initiated a campus-wide project to build a playground at 6th and Mississippi Avenues in Southeast DC. Williams recognized that AU students were drawn towards service and community engagement and wanted to organize a project that would bring students and community members together to build something significant.

A group of AU students came together and formed Project Playground 2000 (or PP2K for short). Over the course of eight months, students worked diligently on a long list of projects. They designed the playground, mobilized the AU community, set up a website, developed relationships in the local community, established a tutoring program in surrounding schools, obtained food donations and supplies, found ways for children to be involved, solicited support from businesses and organizations, applied for grants, coordinated fundraisers, set up musical entertainment, shared with the media, created promotional material, enlisted volunteers - and, of course, got ready for the build day.

The playground project enabled students to utilize the tools they were learning in the classroom and apply them to their world in a very real and practical way.

On April 15, 2000, National Youth Service Day, 400 volunteers from AU and the local community came together to build the playground. While the playground was being built, there was a Children's Carnival for all the young people in the neighborhood. By 4:00 that afternoon the structure was up and the ribbon for the playground was ready to be cut.

Their efforts had paid off! PP2K raised about $45,000 in In-Kind donations and over $50,000 in cash. After everything was paid for, there was $12,500 in cash left over from the project.

Williams graduated in December 2000. During her commencement speech in January 2001, she donated the money left over from the Playground Project to the university. She asked that it be used to start an endowment from which other AU students could receive seed money for service initiatives that they wanted to take on.

Other students took up the cause to raise the Endowment to $50,000. One student in particular, Rick Evanchec, started the momentum for this fundraising challenge. Multiple forms of fundraising took place, including the Founders Day Ball in 2002, a fundraiser at the President's house, and large donations from graduating classes. Over $58,000 was raised by the spring of 2002 and the first grants were awarded during the 2002-2003 school year.

Ten years later, by May 2012, the Endowment had a total of $104,337. The interest generated from the Endowment was providing the money for the student service grants, which are granted three times a year. The original vision to build something significant started with a playground - but the project ended up building something that keeps on giving. The Eagle Endowment has become a way for AU students to continue to educate, serve, and engage with the world they live in.