Fund the Agile Learning Center's COVID-19 Survival!
$9,642
Raised
43
Donations
$70,000
Goal
*UPDATE* Thank you to everyone who donated! The $7000 we received between March and July of 2020 let us offer struggling families extra time on making tuition payments without jeapardizing our ability to pay our bills, subscribe to a couple online services to keep communications steady and secure while we're all remote, and to buy no-touch thermometers for each facilitator with our back-to-school supplies. With your help we made it through the end of last year and the summer. Entering the 2020-2021 year, we're continuing to see increasing expenses (air purifiers, sink repairs, health insurance for staff) as we continue to hear from families that unemployment, relocation, and their own increased covid-adaptation expenses have a number of them unable to support the school like they usually do. We've cut programming expenses, renegotiated our rent, and are down to 3 staff...but the change from last year is still tens of thousands of dollars. We've gotten really positive feedback on our pandemic response and kids' experiences. We'd like to continue running engaging programming, safely as possible, in a supportive community for kids from a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds (and sharing what we learn in support of ALCs around the world!)
But, again, it won't be possible without your help. We're grateful for any support you can offer.
The new video to accompany this update was made with content from the very start of our school year!
Music from a maestro ALC kid who posts work online at https://reallyhadtomakeone.newgrounds.com/
................... Original Ask ...................
We believe self-directed education is liberating and nurturing and creativity supporting and should be as accessible as we can make it. One way we do this is by offering financial aid for +90% of enrolled families at our East Harlem flagship space! Since 2013, we've made this work...running fundraising events whenever we get in a tight spot. We knew that giving all the aid we did in the 2019-2020 school year would mean we'd need to fundraise extra seriously in the spring -- we were ready and excited to get all hands on deck -- but then COVID-19 arrived in our city in March and our plans needed to change.
Through the early weeks of the virus, we moved school online, supported communities around the world through our continuing work as flagship of the ALC Network, and put together this online fundraising campaign (with the above video, made in our last days of being together in school for the year!) With donations and other efforts, we made it through the end of that school year and put a plan together for 2020-2021! But again we're in a bind: as the virus continues to impact our city, we're projecting a sharp drop in tuition income due to families losing employment or leaving the city at the same time that keeping a low student-to-facilitator ratio while we break into small cohorts is crucial to limiting health risks for all community members. We'll have to do more with less...but we've gotten through past challenges with creativity, teamwork, and generosity from supporters. We want to keep serving our local families, ALCs around the world who look to us for guidance, and the growing number of curiosity-celebrating change-makers who see the transformative potential of communities like ours so let our work inspire their own. Every donation helps make it possible for us to keep doing that work!