Facility Startup Campaign
Our organization is expanding to meet the growing demand for full-time, secular, alternative and holistic education that doesn’t sacrifice academics. Building on an 8-year successful part-time program focused on critical thinking, creativity, growth mindset and executive functioning – we have spent the last year redesigning and researching how to ensure a solid full-time program for families in need of an alternative to larger schools that lack a consciously curated culture and ability to focus on individual students and partnering with families to develop students to their best selves.
To that end, we need to provide stability while we grow our full-time community of families. As a non-profit, we don’t have private equity funding and so we come to the community to help get this endeavor off of the ground.
With a board that is made of people who are educators and business owners working hand-in-hand with a clear sense of purpose and an eye on our bottom line, we are confident that we have a team that is working together to ensure our best success.
Help us take our history of success and growth to the next level as we help students move forward with renewed resiliency.
Our Success So Far…
Our Purpose
When our founder started teaching in the community in 2016, it was out of a genuine passion for learning and teaching. With time, connections with like-minded learning leaders and a need for full-time alternative, secular, inclusive education that incorporated executive function skills, social-emotional learning and didn’t sacrifice academics became the goal of Prairie Paideia.
We operate on the “Seven Cs”:
Collaboration
Communication
Community-oriented
Creativity
Critical Thinking
Conservation
Compassion
Our Challenge
We are looking to ensure continuity at our facility to provide stability to our organization as we grow our full-time program. We have made it through the first year on the back of our part-time program and used the funds we have personally plus contributions of volunteering to jump start this endeavor knowing that it was not enough to cover our startup capital needs, but with a plan to potentially cover the missing funds through our part time programs and our founder and main teacher offering not to take an income in the first 2 years to help matters.
Things that changed include a major challenge in obtaining our commercial space with private bathrooms that would allow for children and compliant with zoning, a change in ownership of the space, and a shift in the homeschooling community that changed the demand for the a la carte classes we had always provided and would have helped support more of the new costs as we pursued launching full-time programs.
This is where we turn to the community for support so that we can provide stability during our startup years for full-time programming.
-
Our Team
Our board consists of three educators: one a second-career teacher after a career in management and another that is also a business owner. One has already served on the board of a private school from launch to expansion and another currently runs another non-profit therapeutic school. We have a 20-year certified Project Management Professional (PMP). We know how to navigate most of what comes our way and have an eye on the bottom line. We opted to be a non-profit rather than be held to a profit-based model.
We all came together through homeschooling. Two of our board members homeschooled children all the way through college admissions and the third has homeschooled her children for many years. All continue to have homeschooled children enrolled in every level of offering.
-
How donations will be used
The current campaign ask is half of our targeted startup funding and is seeking to cover facility-related costs through July 31, 2026 including:
Rental costs for our commercial space which includes a proration of the property taxes.
Utilities for our commercial space.
Insurance for our physical space plus liability insurance that includes molestation coverage (all adults working in the facility have a background check done every 3 years).
Facility-related services and supplies including alarm systems, internet and phone service.
All other costs and expenses will be covered by tuition and part-time registration fees.