History

• Founded in 1952. Funds disbursed to children that very same year.
• WKRC-TV involved from the beginning, then owned by Taft Broadcasting. 
• Enquirer Media became involved in 1964. 
• iHeartMedia Cincinnati joined in 1999. 
• Over 700 schools and Head Start sites in 17 counties in the Tri-state area. 
• 1997 flooding: NKOA raised $175,000 for affected areas. In 2012 $60,000 was raised to help children impacted by the tornadoes.

CELEBRATING 70 YEARS OF SERVICE

Neediest Kids of All has been providing everyday necessities to Greater Cincinnati’s underprivileged children for 70 years. It began with a Christmas party and evolved to be a year-round charity to assist the community’s most vulnerable.

The concept for the charity was formed at Christmas 1951, when Radio Cincinnati, Inc., later known as Taft Broadcasting, partnered with 17 Cincinnati Public Schools to give children from less fortunate families a real holiday party like they had never seen before, with candies and fruits and toys delivered by Santa Claus. At the end of the party, one little girl returned the toys and thanked Santa for letting her play with them. She had not realized they were hers to keep. Radio Cincinnati president Hulbert Taft Jr. and co-founder Cleon J. Wingard, the longtime principal of Woodward High School, then pledged to keep the idea going.

Neediest Kids of All, originally sponsored by WKRC and the Cincinnati Times-Star, held its first campaign in 1952, soliciting donations from radio and television audiences. NKOA collected more than $3,000 that year and thousands of toys, enough toys that all the cash was banked to be doled out throughout the year to buy clothing, coats, shoes, eyeglasses and anything else the children needed.

“Neediest Kids of All is an important aid in providing necessities,” the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote in 1966. “But perhaps even more important, the fund often shows a small child that the world is not always cruel and uncaring.”

In 1964, NKOA eliminated the Christmas party to focus on the year-round needs. That year the Enquirer became the charity’s co-sponsor and has remained so. Popular Enquirer cartoonist Jim Borgman created the NKOA logo, the pig-tailed girl in silhouette, for the 1989 campaign. WKRC-TV has been involved since the beginning, while Taft Broadcasting, after several acquisitions, lives on as partner iHeartMedia Cincinnati.

Over the years, NKOA’s reach has expanded to more than 700 schools and Head Start sites in 17 counties in the Tri-state area, with 20,000 children benefiting from the funds every year. In 70 years, NKOA has raised more than $26 million dollars to support our tri-state children in need.