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Capital Campaign

Our Capital Campaign.  We are now a K-5 school, as we begin the 2011-2012 academic year.  We have fine space with a most agreeable landlord, David Blanchard, but space is limited and we're bursting at the seams.  We've more than doubled our student enrollment in 2 years and we need space to grow.  Our vision is 350 students in grades pre-K to 12,with 30 classrooms (maximum class size = 15; average will be about 12) and 3 labs, with other facilities (auditorium, kitchen, playing fields, library, nurse's station, and more).

 

We have planned 4 controlled stages of growth.  In the first stage we will acquire property of 5 or more acres with an existing building that can be quickly modified to serve 50 students.  We have at least two beautiful local properties in sight, either of which will cost us $1 million.   All the cost will be raised by donations to our capital campaign - our tuition will always be kept modest, only meeting operational costs, so that our education is affordable (and made more so with some generous scholarship donations).  This is our big growth challenge.  In the recent past, we have had donations of over $8,500 from parents and friends.  On October 5th, 2011, this total jumped greatly with a $35,000 grant from the Giles W. and Elise G. Mead Foundation! The previous donations gave us a great boost in the eyes of the Mead Foundation board members; we thank them all.  With more donations coming in since then (please see the News page), we have a new total of $46,256 in our capital fund. A formal kick-off of our campaign took place at the school on November 12th 2011.  While attendance was light, the event gave us the impetus to prepare a score of documents that present to potential donors our strong case for support.

 

With realistic and careful design, our cost estimate, including land, architectural and engineering fees, impact fees, etc. is $13.5 million for the final campus.  Our planning documents are available below, and on links from the blue navigation bar at right. We are building this campaign stepwise, with much advice from non-profit leaders and others.  We welcome donations, introductions, visits, and advice that will advance our campaign. We are particularly interested in volunteers who will be contacting potential donors.  We offer a comprehensive orientation to the Academy's mission and professional-level training in fundraising methods. All of our contact information is on this Website.

 

Our donors, potential donors, and supporters deserve the opportunity to see the documentation of our campaign plans, financial status, management competence, building plans, and more.  These are being linked below; clickable links are shown in bold green text.  Most of the documents will pop up as PDF documents in a new window in your browser; some come up as Web pages.  If you need Adobe Reader to view PDFs, you can download it by clicking here.

 

Documents that summarize the capital campaign
    A 2-page flier
    Our successful grant proposal (lots of detail)

   A PowerPoint show about the Academy.   This is large (6 MB) and the videos aren't imbedded; only the lead images of two videos show.   We'll fix this later.  You don't need PowerPoint to view it, but if you don't have PowerPoint, you'll need to download PowerPoint Viewer from Microsoft.  Click on each slide to advance the show.

Our business plans for both operations and the capital campaign
    Our business plan dated 7 August 2011
    Our full financial plan
Our financial status
    Financial statements
    Financial projections for 3 years
School attractiveness & management competence
    Selling points
    Our ability to manage operations and growth
    Analysis of our competitive status
    Testimonials from parents
Building plans

   A narrative that presents our rationale for the size and scope of the campus, and summarizes the estimated costs
   Some details of the cost estimates, including how we designed the size of each room or facility and derived the costs of construction, furnishing, and operations.

 

Development staff: the core of the fundraising effort is contacting prospective donors.  We anticipate having to make about 2,000 contacts to 800 different individuals.  Board chair Vince Gutschick has taken professional training and will lead the effort, but he will need much help.  We have advertised for a paid professional in fundraising, but volunteers will speed the campaign and lighten the load financially.   If you wish to help, we can offer training in the professional methods and standards of fundraising.   Please contact Vince at if you are interested.  We will be very appreciative!  There are some additional details in the posting we placed with United Way's Center for Nonprofit Excellence.