Monday, Jan. 30, 2017
UAS Annual Report message:
I am delayed with my New Year’s message to you, but here it is, with big news. We just submitted our application for 501(c)(3) status application to the IRS—a very important next step for the Squad! Once the IRS approves our application, we will officially become a nonprofit organization, which means we will be able to raise money, seek grants, expand our curricula, seek new partners, and make our programs accessible to many more working families. It took us a long time to complete the application, particularly because I was working full-time in my regular editing job and running UAS at nights and on weekends. I have good news on that front as well, but first, let’s get to the highlights. Like last year, I will send out the UAS financial report as soon as it ready. Early results point toward expansion and self-sustenance.
2016 by the numbers. As many of you already know, 2016 turned out to be a big year for us. We offered 80 program days, up from less than 50 in 2015. In 2016 alone, over 450 Squad members, between PK-4 and 7th grades, attended at least one UAS program; many, many of those children return regularly. Since we started in 2014, almost 600 children have tried UAS, and they come from nearly 70 schools across the D.C. area.
Our mailing list has grown from a dozen subscribers in 2014 to nearly 700 of you today. Our Twitter following has grown more slowly. So, if you want to know what the Squad is up to, please follow us! For all this, and for the pioneering spirit that defines the UAS approach, we earned a mention in a Center for American Progress report for our support to working families.
Anacostia River programming grant. UAS won its first grant, in partnership with Living Classrooms, in support of our Anacostia River watershed rehabilitation programming. So far, we’ve boated down the Anacostia, fished using nets, and hiked on Kingman Island. And, for the first time in three years, we took private buses! Being able to afford buses means that our radius of operations and learning opportunities expand. I am hoping that our imminent nonprofit status will allow us to pursue more opportunities like this, including with the National Park Service Foundation, which provides grants for transportation to national parks.
New programs for new school communities. Apart from DCPS, we now offer UAS special programs for Inspired Teaching, Yu Ying, JPDS, E.L. Haynes, and E.W. Stokes. We added new locations to expand our community-based learning opportunities, including Gallaudet University and Mosaic Church. We held our first program in Montgomery County, at the historic Pump House, and began developing relationships with community organizations that will help us expand our MoCo learning opportunities in 2017 and beyond.
More summer sessions. We doubled the number of summer sessions we offered, running six summer sessions in unique locations in NE and NW DC. In 2017, we’re on track to offer nine weeks of programming!
Partners in hands-on learning. In 2016, we partnered with dozens of people and community organizations to offer unique learning experiences to our Squad members. These are just SOME of them! We hope that when you see these and other names on our Twitter feed, these UAS updates, or in post-program emails we send to families, you’ll support them and tell them that you were inspired by the Squad. We thank Songbyrd Café, Hands on Drums, City Blossoms, Gala Hispanic Theater, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Cultivate the City, Living Classrooms, the Circulator/D.C. Department of Transportation, the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, D.C. Shirt and Print, Archaeology in the Community, D.C. Historic Preservation Office/Office of Planning, SouperGirl, Washington Parks and People, Union Market, the Kennedy Center, Gallaudet University, West End Cinema, and Tregaron Conservancy.
We are very grateful as well to the places where we hold our programs: Temple Micah, the Cleveland Park Club, St. Stephen and the Incarnation, All Souls Church, the City of Rockville Pump House, Embassy Church, Mosaic Church, Gallaudet University, E.W. Stokes, Inspired Teaching, E.L. Haynes, and the Josephine Butler Parks Center.
I didn’t even mention the incredible greenspaces all over D.C. that we visit, play on, and care for through service projects. We hope you’ll patronize those, too, and help preserve them for all.
On a personal note. In 2016, UAS got to a point where I didn’t have enough nights and weekends to bring UAS forward, but, since my work for UAS is all volunteered, we couldn’t give up the income from my regular job. By December 2016, we were able to reduce our family expenses, and I was able to go reduce my hours at my job. This has finally allowed me to do UAS development work during the day, to meet with people with great ideas, and to pursue new partnerships. If you’re one of those people or potential partners, I would love to meet you, too!
UAS will eventually have to pay me a salary. It is my hope that we will continue to grow so that I can begin to work fulltime for UAS soon. I cannot tell you how liberating and exciting this is—or what a pipe dream it was just a few years ago.
WHAT’S AHEAD FOR 2017
Well, we’ve stomped into 2017 with a slate of programs that takes us right through August. Is this crazy? Maybe, but only if we think about gap-day and summer programs in their current context—as a way to literally fill the gaps that leave working families in a lurch and in need of coverage. The Urban Adventure Squad’s mission is two-fold—to provide high-quality programs that support working families, and to use these gap days to bring much-needed experiential and hands-on learning opportunities to school children. We aim to serve both of these missions with equal vigor and creativity, and to sow the seeds for a new model that expands and reforms K-12 education in the United States. Gap days are filled with possibilities for learning and experiencing outside of a traditional school curriculum. We want Squad Members and their families to get as much as possible out of that time.
Restructuring UAS as a nonprofit. This is our first big to-do for this year. We started in 2014 as an LLC because it was a quick and inexpensive process. But we have always been a nonprofit in spirit; our program fees go right back into funding our programs. In 2016, we registered as a nonprofit in D.C. and, as I mentioned, we just sent off our Form 1023—the 501(c)(3) application—to the IRS.
We now have a small board of directors. We’re honored that two wonderful, experienced people—and Squad parents!—have agreed to serve: Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist for TIME, The Atlantic, and other magazines, and the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way. Theola DeBose is the communications director for the National Endowment for the Humanities, former communications director for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, and a former staff writer with the Washington Post. Among the first things we will do once our 501(c)(3) application is approved is to expand the Board. Stay tuned.
Grants and other funding. Official nonprofit status will also help us become eligible for grants and funding, particularly in the areas of out-of-school time, outdoor education, environmental education, and healthy lifestyles for children. We’ll also be looking to partner with other organizations, including community health centers, environmental stewardship organizations, parks departments, and all areas of enrichment programs for children. If you have ideas or referrals and would like to help, we'd love to hear from you.
Private donations. This is also coming down the pike: we’ll be coming to you, our Squad community, to ask for support as we build our programs and operations, and to help us make our programs accessible to more families across the D.C. region. We know that some families pay our fees comfortably, and some have not been able to take advantage of our programs because the fees don’t fit the family budget. We hope you’ll help us find ways to help us make UAS sustainable and accessible.
UAS curriculum in schools. We’re working on ways to collaborate with schools. We want to integrate the UAS model of community-based, experiential learning with lesson planning inside classrooms. We want to work with parents, school administrators, and teachers to become involved in school programming on early release days, intersession programs, and multiday breaks, and we want to offer programs that support schools’ learning objectives. We continuously develop unique, field trip-based lesson plans that can be delivered in a cost-efficient way. Our programs cover architecture, engineering, botany, culture, environmental science, agriculture, history, economics, and more. Outdoor learning opportunities, particularly through field trips, are rare even in well-funded schools, and we think they should be central to K-12 education. Our nonprofit status should lower some of the barriers to entry into schools.
System upgrade. With the increased volume of operations in 2016, it has become clear to me that our registration system is far short of where we want to be. We’ve been lucky to have supportive Squad families who have offered feedback, support, and continue to remain patient, but running a lean organization is not a permanent excuse for cumbersome processes. We want to combine the two-step registration and payment process into one. I also think it is time to offer UAS subscriptions, so that families can choose and pay for a number of programs days (10, 20, more) at the start of the year.
On the backend, we need to make sure that the age distribution during the registration process remains within our staffing capabilities. One of the consequences of opening registration early has been a younger squad, which makes it hard to maintain safe adult-to-child ratios. Parents of older squad members tend to register late, perhaps because it is a more collaborative decision. The challenges here are significant and we haven’t been able to find an off-the-shelf solution that meets our needs. I hope to be able to approach some of you who have expertise to form a technology committee, or even just to give us advice, on overhauling the system.
Staff Development. The success of UAS depends on our ability to hire and retain talented, engaged, creative Squad Leaders who will support our daily programs as well as participate in the development of future programs. We continue to look for men and women who love to work with children and believe in our educational mission. We hire high school seniors, college undergraduates, recent grads, graduate students, career changers, and parents returning to work. We believe that anyone can make a good Squad leader provided they love working with children and want to teach. We are especially looking for people who believe in outdoor education and experiential learning—our core goals. We seek to be innovative in identifying and training people who might believe in our mission but who may not have formal training in it. We will be hiring more staff, so please send us recommendations.
Mentor network. As UAS grows, we want to create a network of specialists who we can consult with as we develop new programs. We need mentors in science and technology, the environment, the arts, architecture, theater, music, cooking, coding, and more. My hope is that these mentors will remain tied to Squad Members who age out of our programs. We will be creating a position of volunteer coordinator to spearhead this effort.
Thinking Ahead. As always, we are full of plans. We’d like to buy a bus, so that we can plan field trips further out. As soon as my schedule allows, I’m going to take classes that allow me to drive that bus! In the coming years, we want to have a UAS teaching farm—on land that we would buy or borrow—where children can come for the day, or for multi-day programs, and grow food, care for the land, build structures, conduct science experiments, and learn by doing and observing. We also want to go beyond the Washington metropolitan area. We believe the UAS model can travel to other cities and towns.
In an educational era of increased testing and decreased recess time, the UAS model of community-based, experiential learning is a pioneering one. There is a lot of talk about this, but we’ve actually been doing it for the last three years. By leveraging community resources, we've found a way to deliver high-quality programs that are intellectually stimulating, connect children to their community, and emphasize the outdoors, all at a reasonable cost to families, schools, and school systems.
Elana Mintz
Founder, Urban Adventure Squad
www.urbanadventuresquad.com
Twitter.com/UrbanAdvSquad
UAS Annual Report message:
I am delayed with my New Year’s message to you, but here it is, with big news. We just submitted our application for 501(c)(3) status application to the IRS—a very important next step for the Squad! Once the IRS approves our application, we will officially become a nonprofit organization, which means we will be able to raise money, seek grants, expand our curricula, seek new partners, and make our programs accessible to many more working families. It took us a long time to complete the application, particularly because I was working full-time in my regular editing job and running UAS at nights and on weekends. I have good news on that front as well, but first, let’s get to the highlights. Like last year, I will send out the UAS financial report as soon as it ready. Early results point toward expansion and self-sustenance.
2016 by the numbers. As many of you already know, 2016 turned out to be a big year for us. We offered 80 program days, up from less than 50 in 2015. In 2016 alone, over 450 Squad members, between PK-4 and 7th grades, attended at least one UAS program; many, many of those children return regularly. Since we started in 2014, almost 600 children have tried UAS, and they come from nearly 70 schools across the D.C. area.
Our mailing list has grown from a dozen subscribers in 2014 to nearly 700 of you today. Our Twitter following has grown more slowly. So, if you want to know what the Squad is up to, please follow us! For all this, and for the pioneering spirit that defines the UAS approach, we earned a mention in a Center for American Progress report for our support to working families.
Anacostia River programming grant. UAS won its first grant, in partnership with Living Classrooms, in support of our Anacostia River watershed rehabilitation programming. So far, we’ve boated down the Anacostia, fished using nets, and hiked on Kingman Island. And, for the first time in three years, we took private buses! Being able to afford buses means that our radius of operations and learning opportunities expand. I am hoping that our imminent nonprofit status will allow us to pursue more opportunities like this, including with the National Park Service Foundation, which provides grants for transportation to national parks.
New programs for new school communities. Apart from DCPS, we now offer UAS special programs for Inspired Teaching, Yu Ying, JPDS, E.L. Haynes, and E.W. Stokes. We added new locations to expand our community-based learning opportunities, including Gallaudet University and Mosaic Church. We held our first program in Montgomery County, at the historic Pump House, and began developing relationships with community organizations that will help us expand our MoCo learning opportunities in 2017 and beyond.
More summer sessions. We doubled the number of summer sessions we offered, running six summer sessions in unique locations in NE and NW DC. In 2017, we’re on track to offer nine weeks of programming!
Partners in hands-on learning. In 2016, we partnered with dozens of people and community organizations to offer unique learning experiences to our Squad members. These are just SOME of them! We hope that when you see these and other names on our Twitter feed, these UAS updates, or in post-program emails we send to families, you’ll support them and tell them that you were inspired by the Squad. We thank Songbyrd Café, Hands on Drums, City Blossoms, Gala Hispanic Theater, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Cultivate the City, Living Classrooms, the Circulator/D.C. Department of Transportation, the Dumbarton Oaks Park Conservancy, D.C. Shirt and Print, Archaeology in the Community, D.C. Historic Preservation Office/Office of Planning, SouperGirl, Washington Parks and People, Union Market, the Kennedy Center, Gallaudet University, West End Cinema, and Tregaron Conservancy.
We are very grateful as well to the places where we hold our programs: Temple Micah, the Cleveland Park Club, St. Stephen and the Incarnation, All Souls Church, the City of Rockville Pump House, Embassy Church, Mosaic Church, Gallaudet University, E.W. Stokes, Inspired Teaching, E.L. Haynes, and the Josephine Butler Parks Center.
I didn’t even mention the incredible greenspaces all over D.C. that we visit, play on, and care for through service projects. We hope you’ll patronize those, too, and help preserve them for all.
On a personal note. In 2016, UAS got to a point where I didn’t have enough nights and weekends to bring UAS forward, but, since my work for UAS is all volunteered, we couldn’t give up the income from my regular job. By December 2016, we were able to reduce our family expenses, and I was able to go reduce my hours at my job. This has finally allowed me to do UAS development work during the day, to meet with people with great ideas, and to pursue new partnerships. If you’re one of those people or potential partners, I would love to meet you, too!
UAS will eventually have to pay me a salary. It is my hope that we will continue to grow so that I can begin to work fulltime for UAS soon. I cannot tell you how liberating and exciting this is—or what a pipe dream it was just a few years ago.
WHAT’S AHEAD FOR 2017
Well, we’ve stomped into 2017 with a slate of programs that takes us right through August. Is this crazy? Maybe, but only if we think about gap-day and summer programs in their current context—as a way to literally fill the gaps that leave working families in a lurch and in need of coverage. The Urban Adventure Squad’s mission is two-fold—to provide high-quality programs that support working families, and to use these gap days to bring much-needed experiential and hands-on learning opportunities to school children. We aim to serve both of these missions with equal vigor and creativity, and to sow the seeds for a new model that expands and reforms K-12 education in the United States. Gap days are filled with possibilities for learning and experiencing outside of a traditional school curriculum. We want Squad Members and their families to get as much as possible out of that time.
Restructuring UAS as a nonprofit. This is our first big to-do for this year. We started in 2014 as an LLC because it was a quick and inexpensive process. But we have always been a nonprofit in spirit; our program fees go right back into funding our programs. In 2016, we registered as a nonprofit in D.C. and, as I mentioned, we just sent off our Form 1023—the 501(c)(3) application—to the IRS.
We now have a small board of directors. We’re honored that two wonderful, experienced people—and Squad parents!—have agreed to serve: Amanda Ripley is an investigative journalist for TIME, The Atlantic, and other magazines, and the author, most recently, of The Smartest Kids in the World--and How They Got That Way. Theola DeBose is the communications director for the National Endowment for the Humanities, former communications director for the D.C. Public Charter School Board, and a former staff writer with the Washington Post. Among the first things we will do once our 501(c)(3) application is approved is to expand the Board. Stay tuned.
Grants and other funding. Official nonprofit status will also help us become eligible for grants and funding, particularly in the areas of out-of-school time, outdoor education, environmental education, and healthy lifestyles for children. We’ll also be looking to partner with other organizations, including community health centers, environmental stewardship organizations, parks departments, and all areas of enrichment programs for children. If you have ideas or referrals and would like to help, we'd love to hear from you.
Private donations. This is also coming down the pike: we’ll be coming to you, our Squad community, to ask for support as we build our programs and operations, and to help us make our programs accessible to more families across the D.C. region. We know that some families pay our fees comfortably, and some have not been able to take advantage of our programs because the fees don’t fit the family budget. We hope you’ll help us find ways to help us make UAS sustainable and accessible.
UAS curriculum in schools. We’re working on ways to collaborate with schools. We want to integrate the UAS model of community-based, experiential learning with lesson planning inside classrooms. We want to work with parents, school administrators, and teachers to become involved in school programming on early release days, intersession programs, and multiday breaks, and we want to offer programs that support schools’ learning objectives. We continuously develop unique, field trip-based lesson plans that can be delivered in a cost-efficient way. Our programs cover architecture, engineering, botany, culture, environmental science, agriculture, history, economics, and more. Outdoor learning opportunities, particularly through field trips, are rare even in well-funded schools, and we think they should be central to K-12 education. Our nonprofit status should lower some of the barriers to entry into schools.
System upgrade. With the increased volume of operations in 2016, it has become clear to me that our registration system is far short of where we want to be. We’ve been lucky to have supportive Squad families who have offered feedback, support, and continue to remain patient, but running a lean organization is not a permanent excuse for cumbersome processes. We want to combine the two-step registration and payment process into one. I also think it is time to offer UAS subscriptions, so that families can choose and pay for a number of programs days (10, 20, more) at the start of the year.
On the backend, we need to make sure that the age distribution during the registration process remains within our staffing capabilities. One of the consequences of opening registration early has been a younger squad, which makes it hard to maintain safe adult-to-child ratios. Parents of older squad members tend to register late, perhaps because it is a more collaborative decision. The challenges here are significant and we haven’t been able to find an off-the-shelf solution that meets our needs. I hope to be able to approach some of you who have expertise to form a technology committee, or even just to give us advice, on overhauling the system.
Staff Development. The success of UAS depends on our ability to hire and retain talented, engaged, creative Squad Leaders who will support our daily programs as well as participate in the development of future programs. We continue to look for men and women who love to work with children and believe in our educational mission. We hire high school seniors, college undergraduates, recent grads, graduate students, career changers, and parents returning to work. We believe that anyone can make a good Squad leader provided they love working with children and want to teach. We are especially looking for people who believe in outdoor education and experiential learning—our core goals. We seek to be innovative in identifying and training people who might believe in our mission but who may not have formal training in it. We will be hiring more staff, so please send us recommendations.
Mentor network. As UAS grows, we want to create a network of specialists who we can consult with as we develop new programs. We need mentors in science and technology, the environment, the arts, architecture, theater, music, cooking, coding, and more. My hope is that these mentors will remain tied to Squad Members who age out of our programs. We will be creating a position of volunteer coordinator to spearhead this effort.
Thinking Ahead. As always, we are full of plans. We’d like to buy a bus, so that we can plan field trips further out. As soon as my schedule allows, I’m going to take classes that allow me to drive that bus! In the coming years, we want to have a UAS teaching farm—on land that we would buy or borrow—where children can come for the day, or for multi-day programs, and grow food, care for the land, build structures, conduct science experiments, and learn by doing and observing. We also want to go beyond the Washington metropolitan area. We believe the UAS model can travel to other cities and towns.
In an educational era of increased testing and decreased recess time, the UAS model of community-based, experiential learning is a pioneering one. There is a lot of talk about this, but we’ve actually been doing it for the last three years. By leveraging community resources, we've found a way to deliver high-quality programs that are intellectually stimulating, connect children to their community, and emphasize the outdoors, all at a reasonable cost to families, schools, and school systems.
Elana Mintz
Founder, Urban Adventure Squad
www.urbanadventuresquad.com
Twitter.com/UrbanAdvSquad