06 Oct 2019/20 Annual Report is Available Now
A Letter From Our President: Anthony Moran
Happy 25th Anniversary to the Northshore Schools Foundation! I would have been honored and humbled to be the president during this auspicious time under normal circumstances. But serving now, in a world affected by COVID-19, I find myself in utter awe.
The Foundation Board has continued in our real-world role(s) while at the same time learning a completely new function set to deal with the unforeseen complications of the COVID one. We completed the strategic plan refresh process, setting new goals and intentions for the work we will accomplish over the next four years.
One of those goals was the hiring of a full-time staff person as our Philanthropy Director. We brought on Ahna Machan as our new team member on the operations side. She has the responsibility of connecting with our donors and ensuring that their investment is making the impact that they intended here in Northshore.
Because we are growing rapidly in order to meet the increased District needs, we have also added a special services position from ‘Social with Julie’ to take over our communications and social media reporting platforms. This has been instrumental in educating and raising awareness in our community about the work we do for students.
Our operations staff is a unique mix of the full and almost full-time efforts of Carmin and Emily respectively, a couple of other part-time staff providing less than 15 hours a month, and spot contractors for project work. This team structure allows us to be extremely nimble in our ability to fulfill our mission without an extensive administrative cost.
And boy, are we glad we had our team on hand when the world changed in March. Just as we were getting ready to celebrate our 25th anniversary with an epic breakfast and lunch presentation, along with our first ever Gala, COVID-19 hit. Listening to our community we knew we had to turn our attention to the Northshore families in crisis.
The board directed the staff team to immediately engage our District & Community response fund. This is the emergency bucket we put in place three years ago to enable the community to help anytime a crisis affects our District. Those funds made it possible for us to say “Yes” to offering a 100% scholarship for 80 weeks of childcare to essential workers.
We rapidly expanded our Basic Needs Aid program, which in the real world offers a $200 grocery card to a family in crisis. The board passed a motion proclaiming Covid-19 a community crisis and 687 families received gift cards. Heather, our Removing Barriers coordinator, quickly went from 10 hours a month to 25 hours a week in order to answer the demand. Our Backpacks for Kids’ outreach morphed into a program that provides school supplies to families in need all last spring and continuing this fall.
The Foundation was able to help coordinate community initiatives that provided books for students stuck in their homes and a menstrual care supply drive. The community response was unreal, with never before seen support from the NSEA and our Northshore teachers, and so many individuals who became first-time donors. With all their help we were able to make sure no family was left behind.
There was a huge program upgrade that occurred in 2019/20 to our Opportunity Fund. The board has not yet made this widely known to the public but an anonymous donor provided funding for a pilot program that allows middle and high schools to provide support for students in financial need for basically anything. We designed the program such that financial restrictions would never limit a student’s success. This is a major partnership move to align with the District’s strategic plan to remove the opportunity gap for our Northshore kids.
Obviously, the COVID reality did not let our efforts come fully to fruition but we are looking forward to engaging this program once students are back in school full time.
But the COVID reality forcing outside the box thinking has allowed us to do some really cool things like taking our Launch Day online and recording those life lessons, making them available for all students to access at any time. We also had a virtual music concert allowing students to perform with their instruments online. Suddenly extended family members from all over the country were able to participate in ways never before possible.
Through all of this we continued to provide our real world classroom grants and District grants. We continued to test our Northshore Gives platform allowing community members and teachers to raise money for their school related projects.
We are immensely grateful to and humbled by our educators and administrators who are working day and night to adjust to this new way of teaching. We are thankful for our community who bolsters our efforts in this ever-changing environment.
We want you to know that the Board will continue to work in support of guiding our students through this and into their future, hopefully enhancing and inspiring their educational experience along the way.
Warmest Regards,
Anthony Moran, Northshore Schools Foundation President 2019-2021
