Open Reporting: PPND I
Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development: Catalytic Funding, Mid-Report
As we continue our work, we are working to operate more and more like an Open Company. All along, transparency has been central to our mission. Generally, non-profits do not try and hide things from the public, but we rarely go out of our way to share information aside from the cursory year-end report. While our grant reports might not be first on everyone’s reading list, we hope that sharing them will offer some insight into how we operate and serve as an extra thanks to our funders. Non-profits also do a lot of work writing these reports that are read by only a handful of grant officers. Maybe, if we write them well, they can serve as a quality update to our supporters as well.
So here is public grant reporting, take one. This April the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development (PPND) awarded us $50,000 as a catalytic grant to support three main aspects of our work.
1. Prove the logistical and financial feasibility of our model
2. Refine and expand our ability and capacity to operate effectively
3. Invest in building well-established classroom partnerships throughout our campus neighborhood
To us, one of the most exciting things about the funding from PPND was that it came not just to support our work in higher education, but, even more, to support the community development work that we see as integral to our model. PPND shares our vision for creative neighborhood reinvestment. With their help, we are excited to continue our work to serve both students and neighborhoods. A main goal for us, from the beginning, has been to create mutually beneficial economic partnerships within the community. Because the neighborhood is our campus, our success is tied to its livelihood.
Not only are we working to directly invest in neighborhood development, we are also providing low-cost training to many people doing similar work. The students in our courses are often from the neighborhoods we call home or from area businesses and non-profits. Our hope is that the graphic design, carpentry, agriculture and web development skills they learn with us will better equip them to do their work and build up our neighborhoods.
1. Proving the Model
As a higher education laboratory, one of our primary goals is to prove the efficacy of our programs. Due to our limited capacity we struggled to do this early on, but we are slowing improving our “laboratory” skills so that we can provide detailed proof-of-concept behind each of our ideas. During our first year of classes, we primarily wanted to show that the financial model was a success, as a revenue stream for both us and our community partners.
For a more detailed breakdown of the last year’s work, check out the recent report. Here, will just share a few key figures.
Revenue for Us
Over the past year we have held 11 courses. We began at a conservative price-point of $350 and have moved as high as $450, while keeping classes capped at just 12 students.We have taught graphic design, web development, organic agriculture, carpentry, and GIS. If a student were to take these classes full-time (4/semester) it would cost them just $3600/year. In total, students have paid about $42,000 to take classes with us. About $11,000 of that has gone to pay our administrative salaries. While it’s not yet at the point of sustainability, it is well on its way.
Here’s a brief breakdown of a recent class budget:
12 Students pay $450 bringing in $5400.
We pay instructors $3060 to teach for 12 weeks, about $30-$35/hour.
This wage is on par with the national average for adjunct instructors and is higher than a number of local colleges.
We support each classroom partner with about $500 in return value.
We set aside about $500 to pay for equipment, an end-of-course feast, and supplies for instructors.
The remaining $1340 goes to support the administrative staff and infrastructure improvements for classroom locations.
In the future, if we raise our prices to meet up with our revised goal for a yearly cost of $6500 the budget would be almost double the previous one, but still dramatically less expensive than most other colleges:
12 Students would pay $813/course bringing in $9750
We could pay $6100 to instructors for 12 weeks, about $60/hour.
We would support each classroom partner with at least $1000.
We could set aside $650 to pay for equipment, an end-of-course feast, and various other supplies for instructors.
The remaining $2000 would go to support the administrative staff and infrastructure improvements for the program at large.
Revenue for Partners
By holding our courses in underused spaces, we are able to keep our costs really low while mutually benefiting community partners. The best example of a classroom partner has been the Commonplace Voluto coffee shop on Penn Avenue. Over the last year, we have contributed about $4500 to Commonplace through purchases by our staff and students, as well as direct rent payments. We have held 4 classes in their space. In talking with the owners, we know that this newly acquired location has struggled to make a profit. If we held 3 courses per term (9 per year) in their space, we could contribute somewhere between $7,000 - $10,000 to their yearly revenue.
In addition to direct financial contributions, we also contribute value through student and staff work hours and infrastructure improvements. We contribute based on the needs of our courses and the needs of our partners. There is more on this value-added aspect of our partnerships in section 3, Building the Campus.
2. Expanding Capacity
In Fall 2012, we held our first ever course prototype. The following Spring we grew to hold 4 courses. Getting these first classes up and running was a big step for us but, like most early stage projects, was a bootstrapping effort. It took all of our staff capacity (and then some) just to tread water. We were able to run programs for the first time, but didn’t have the systems or staff time to maintain them while also looking to the future. We asked for funding, in part, so that we could hire an Operations Manager to help run the ship, while we plan where to go next and gather the resources to get there.
We plan to spend about half the grant ($26,000) on staff compensation and upgrades to our administrative systems. Here are some of the improvements the PPND funding has allowed:
- Hired and trained an Operations Manager who has taken over course logistics, purchasing, accounting, reporting, assessment, newsletter publishing, web maintenance, and the managing of all student registrations. This has freed up our Director to focus on launching a year-long Web Development program and 5 new courses.
- Hiring of our Director as a full-time employee. Previous to the PPND funding, our Director was paid as a part-time contract employee. Now able to devote more time to the work, we have been able to move from a very reactive workflow, to a more strategic proactive approach. Instead of pulling our programs together just in time, we are able to plan strategically months in advance. This shift, perhaps the most important result of all, has been enabled by a number of new administrative systems.
- Set up Quickbooks Online for accounting
- Performed our first Financial Review with auditors
- Set up payroll and HR systems and officially hired our staff
- Set up Attendly system for managing course registrations
- Finalized and purchased comprehensive insurance policies (allowing us to more easily obtain keys from classroom partners)
- Set up Salesforce for CRM and Donor tracking
- Launched a new Saxifrage School website; launched a website for the Pittsburgh Forum; setup Github and Dploy.io for website maintenance collaboration and automatic deployment
- Began professional design process for logo and all print materials
- Overall, our administrative capacity is now well-positioned to grow from running 3-4 courses at a time to running 8-9 course. We are also in a good place, if we expand the hours of our Operations Director next year, to run Dev.Year: a 24-student full-time, year-long program.
Due to its urgency, we prioritized the capacity-expanding work so that we could improve systems to free up staff resources as quickly as possible. Over the remainder of the funding period, we plan to continue refining our payment system by setting up a fee-less online Dwolla payment platform and continuing to train our Operations Manager by providing professional development opportunities.
3. Building the Campus
This third part of our funding provides investment directly to our campus partners in ways that benefit both of our operations. We specifically planned to split this funding pretty equally between our three major program areas: web development, agriculture, and carpentry. Here is the brief breakdown of improvements that have occurred or are underway:
Web Development
Initial investments have included a top-quality HD projection setup stored permanently at Commonplace Voluto Coffee. It includes several cables, adapters, screen, projector, and projection mount. The majority of campus investments for our web development program will come in the Spring time after we have confirmed new classroom partners for our Dev.Year program. We plan to install similar A/V setups in multiple locations around our campus. This equipment will be both for our use and the use of our campus partners.
Agriculture
Our main partner for these courses is Garfield Farm. With the help of funding, we were able to transition to holding a course here this Fall (after holding an earlier on the North Side). In addition to helping build their new Bioshelter, our students built planting beds and cold frames. They assisted in seed-starting and farm maintenance for twelve weeks.
Further funding went to purchase perennial fruit trees and bushes. The planting and maintenance of these trees will be part of current and future course curricula. The perennials provide us with a valuable learning resource and provide the farm with increased output.
In the Spring, before and during our first course of 2014, our carpentry students will help construct a large outdoor learning pavilion at the Farm. This space will be used for our courses, as well as community events and other groups learning at Garfield Farm. PPND funds will go to pay for the supplies for this project.
Carpentry
Our woodshop at the Union Project is still in the early stages of its improvement, but we have come a long way. We converted the cluttered basement catacombs into a usable woodshop.
Funding has, initially, gone towards immediate upgrades to our tools and equipment while we continue envisioning and planning a larger-scale renovation with the Union Project. Recent additions include quality measuring and guiding equipment, routers, circular saws, better lighting, and storage. During our recent course, students built 3 chicken coops. Two are being contributed to local non-profit partners, the third is being purchased.
Currently, we are looking at bids for the pouring of a new concrete floor and talking with electricians to improve outlets and lighting. We hope to finish renovations by the Spring, but the cost of the work is higher than we initially hoped. We are planning to offset some of the costs by using volunteer labor to assist with some of the work.
What’s Next
During the final half of our funding period, we will be focused on larger infrastructure upgrades with our classroom partners. Specifically, we plan to spend the early winter finalizing designs and costs for the woodshop renovation at the Union Project and the outdoor classroom pavilion at Garfield Farm. The goal is to have everything prepared to begin construction on both projects in March. Additionally, we hope to further invest in building classroom partnerships in the Larimer neighborhood. Having held one class there in a temporary location, we plan to dedicate resources towards identifying and establishing a long-term classroom partnership.
We also have a serious learning curve to continue improving our use of our new administrative systems. Having setup Salesforce, Quickbooks Online, new websites, student registration, and others, there is a lot of work left for our staff to best learn how to integrate all of these administrative platforms. We are hoping to set aside time for professional development in these areas and to set up a number of APIs to share data across platforms and limit future data entry. During this next stage of the PPND funding we will be testing how our newly built systems and capacity hold up to an expanded course load. We will likely identify further administrative improvements to make along the way.
Many thanks to PPND (soon to be renamed as Neighborhood Allies) for their support and their vision for creative, long-term investment in our city’s neighborhoods.
