Our Kresge Challenge

Wow! When we opened the mail today we got some great news! The Kresge Foundation approved our request, but it came with a challenge. If we could raise $438,000, they would give us an additioanl $200,000. Kresge is a very stringent national foundation and it is tough to get their blessing. This would bring credence to our efforts and we hoped it would attract other funders. While some of the Kresge match could come through foundation grants, a good chunk of it needed to come from individual support. This meant we needed to mobilize our foot soldiers (aka our students) to help us raise more money.


We decided to invest our energy in the upcoming Walk for Music. Without thinking too much about it I publically stated our goal - we were going to raise $40,000 through the Walk for Music. This was double what we had raised last year and immediately after annoucing that lofty goal, I started having second thoughts. The recession was front page news, unemployment was up and people were nervous. How could we possibly raise so much money in this climate? But once I had announced the goal there was no turning back. Our Board, staff, youth and parents all chipped in and when WFM was complete we had raised $40,233.