Open Reporting: Neighborhood Allies
Catalytic Funding, Final Report
Here is public grant reporting for the Saxifrage School, take four. Last year the Pittsburgh Partnership for Neighborhood Development (now known as Neighborhood Allies) 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
Here is our final report that builds on and updates information from our Mid-Term report. The 2013-14 year has been an exciting one for us in many ways, seeing us grow from a small, boot-strapped operation to a fully-fledged organization with paid staff and consistent programs. Our work to change the future of higher education and build up the city we love has come a long way, but it is just getting started. Without a doubt, this would not have been possible without the catalytic funding provided by Neighborhood Allies.
The report walks generally through the 3 major areas of our work that we used funding to improve during the last year, followed by a more focused summary of our outcomes.
1. Proving the Model
The funding from Neighborhood Allies gave us the time and capacity necessary to really dig in and prove our financial and logistical models work. Prior to this funding, we had barely begun prototyping our concepts; it enabled us to run a year’s worth of courses and teach about 200 students. After this first full year of operation, we are blown away by the simple success of our operation: we can legitimately claim that college-quality courses can be offered in nomadic locations for a true cost of about $450/student. Not only does our non-traditional campus model drastically lower costs for students, but it directly invests in the local economy.
Revenue for Us
Over the past year we have held 15 courses. We began at a conservative price-point of $350 and have moved as high as $495, while keeping classes capped at just 12 students. We have taught graphic design, web development, permaculture, human-centered design, organic agriculture, fine and construction carpentry, philosophy, 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 $60,000 to take classes with us. 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 rental income or other contribution.
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. As of Spring, 2013 we have contributed about $5500 to Commonplace through purchases by our staff and students, as well as direct rent payments. We have held 6 classes in their space. In talking with the owners, we know that this newly acquired location has struggled to make a profit and our mutually beneficial operations have helped their bottom line. 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.
2. Expanding Capacity
Neighborhood Allies funding has enabled us to move from bootstrap, to full-scale professional operation.
About half of our grant funding went towards staff compensation and upgrades to our administrative systems. Here are some of the improvements the Neighborhood Allies funding has allowed:
- Employed a temporary, part-time Operations Manager who took over course logistics, purchasing, accounting, reporting, assessment, newsletter publishing, web maintenance, and the managing of all student registrations. This freed up our Director to focus on fund development, public speaking opportunities, and launching a year-long Web Development program and new courses.
- Hiring of our Director as a full-time employee. Previous to the Neighborhood Allies 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
- Implemented Attendly system for managing course registrations
- Finalized and purchased comprehensive insurance policies (allowing us to more easily obtain keys from classroom partners)
- Set up systems for CRM and Donor tracking
- Launched a new Saxifrage School website; launched a website for the Pittsburgh Forum and Dev.Year; setup Github and Dploy.io for website maintenance collaboration and automatic deployment
- Finished professional design process for logo and all print materials: posters, bookmarks, course catalogs, classroom partner decals, etc.
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:
Web Development
Initial investments include a top-quality HD projection setup stored permanently at Commonplace Voluto Coffee. It includes several cables, adapters, screen, projector, and projection mount. We have purchased similar A/V setups for other classroom locations. This equipment will be available both for our use and the use of our campus partners.
Agriculture
The main partner for our Agriculture 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, fencing, and a new deck. They assisted in seed-starting and farm maintenance for 24 weeks of this year.
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.
This Spring, our Carpentry students helped build a deck and outdoor work area at the Farm to improve its usability as an outdoor classroom. This space will be used for our courses, as well as community events and other groups learning at Garfield Farm. Neighborhood Allies funds paid for the supplies for this project.
Carpentry
Our woodshop at the Union Project has come a long way. We converted the cluttered basement catacombs into a usable woodshop. We began by purchasing materials and constructing 4 work tables, benches, storage shelves, and supply closets. An air filtration system was also added to the space to improve air quality and dust removal.
Funding has, initially, gone towards immediate upgrades to our tools and equipment. Recent additions include quality measuring and guiding equipment, routers, circular saws, better lighting, and storage. During our recent course, students built 3 chicken coops as course projects. The coops were distributed to local partner organizations and small food-production operations.
We are currently completing details for the final improvement project at the Union Project. Bids are currently out to have an electrician come in and do some minor electrical improvements paid for by the Saxifrage School.
Summary
1. Prove the logistical and financial feasibility of the model by continuing to offer classes that increase in size, duration, and quantity. (Courses in 2013-14 included web development, graphic design, civic problem-solving, organic agriculture, fine carpentry, and construction carpentry.)
Not only has this catalytic funding period enabled us to prove our model by running our first successful year of programs, it gave us the time and momentum necessary to get some serious national exposure. The proof of concept and ideas behind the Saxifrage School were shared by our Director in national media outlets (the Wall Street Journal) and we were invited to give public presentations at SXSWEdu, the Digital Media and Learning Conference (DML2014), and TEDxGrandviewAve. Just last week we were asked to consult with the State of California Department of Finance on how to best spend their state-wide Innovation Funds for Higher Education reform initiatives.
We succeeded in launching all of the above courses, as well as our first-ever humanities course in Applied Hellenistic Philosophy. Over 200 students have taken our courses, with a handful taking as many as 3-4 different classes. We also experimented with offering courses of different lengths: 12 week courses, 2-day workshops, and 8 week/two-saturday hybrids.
After this first year of operation we are well-positioned for the next stage of our work: taking this proven model and growing it into a fully-fledged operation that can offer programs for full-time students.
2. Refine and expand its ability and capacity to operate efficiently and thus earn revenue for operation and expansion with the creation of new systems for registration, payment, recruitment, and class logistics, and to add staff support for administrative functions by July;
This has been, by far, the most difficult part of our work. Since our inception our organization has made a lot happen with very little resources. The catalytic funding from Neighborhood Allies helped us to really stretch our legs and build the groundwork for the sort of quality operation we want to run. After a year spent creating staff systems, software systems, registration, accounting, and more, we have established a quality operation, but perhaps more importantly, have identified all the areas that continue to need improvement. After this year, we feel like we have built the beginnings of a well-run organization and are excited to see what we can build upon this foundation. It feels really good to have a lot of these difficult, but necessary, administrative hurdles figured out so that we can move forward knowing that we are in good standing regarding insurance, governance, taxes, accounting, and general administrative capacity.
Earned revenue from classes continues to grow, but we have a lot of work left to do to improve our ability to recruit new students. While the amount and consistency of our revenue increased, launching new courses and recruiting students proved extremely difficult. To improve our recruitment, we began a new project called “Learn.Pgh” to help expand the collective marketing power of all non-traditional Pittsburgh educators: www.learnpgh.com. This idea is explain in detail here, and will be executed in partnership with Grow Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Filmmakers, Tree Pittsburgh, the Union Project, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, Winchester Thurston, the Environmental Charter School and others. The hope of Learn.Pgh is to create a platform for students to find out about learning opportunities amidst the distributed network of great quality educators from non-traditional institutions.
3. Create a network of well-established classroom partnerships throughout the campus neighborhoods (i.e. theaters, music venues, farms, grocery stores, restaurants, exercise centers, bookstores, farms, etc.), with two-year agreements with four partners by August, and a longer-term goal of each partner receiving $50/student/class in a direct benefit such as rent, labor, capital improvements or increased sales. The goal for classrooms/projects is at least three per neighborhood by 2014.
In our first full year of operation, we established classroom partnerships in 8 different locations. Our recently active campus partners represent with a “Campus Partner” badge in their windows.
Partners include: the Sprout Fund, Constellation Coffee, Commonplace-Voluto Coffee, gTech, Garfield Community Farm, the Union Project (two locations), the Beauty Shoppe, and P.U.L.S.E.
While we found it unnecessary to setup fully-fledged two-year agreements, we did create a system for utilizing both rental Contracts or Memos of Understanding where appropriate to confirm partnerships when appropriate. With many of our partners we settled on flexible one-year partnership agreements, with others we organized things on an ad-hoc, course-by-course basis to meet our flexible needs. In particular, we have formed long-term partnerships most strongly with the Union Project, Garfield Farm, and Commonplace-Voluto Coffee.
Although the math looks different depending on the partnership, most of our courses from the 2013-14 calendar provided the hoped for ~$50/student benefit to our partners. At Commonplace-Voluto this came via a combination of increased sales and rental income, while at locations like Garfield Farm and the Union Project it came via a combination of infrastructure improvements and the value of volunteer labor.
Moving into 2014-15, we hope to further invest the quality of our pre-existing partner locations as we continue to build a network of future partners that we can tap into when the need arises. Right now, finding classroom locations is the easiest part of our work. Available space is easy to locate and we have many potential partners waiting in the wings eager to work with us on mutually beneficial projects. Once our recruitment and program capacity expands, the further expansion of our campus partnerships will be an easy task.
