Cultivating Ballet Culture: Week 2
A nonprofit fundraiser supporting
Mannakin Theater & DanceCultivating Ballet Culture brings quality ballet opportunities to underserved youth and families.
$24,611
raised by 148 people
$20,000 goal
Week 1 Goal Accomplished!
Dear Supporters, Thank you for helping us reach our goal of 125 supporters for week one of the "A Community Thrives Fundraising Challenge"! We reached out to all of you and you came through with over 146 unique donations. In just one week, we beat our 2019 total for the entire contest!
We were in stiff competition for the mini-grant, last week. The top two organizations received 856 and 844 unique donors and each won a grant of $5,000 from the Gannett Foundation! Amazing work and we congratulate them and their MANY supporters. Week three of the four week competition will be the same format of most unique donors, so hold your smaller donations in hand until then!
This week is a race to see who can raise the most money by Monday at 9:00PT. So, now is the time to click with big dollars because the top two organizations will each receive $4,000 from the Gannett Foundation.
Click away and spread the word!
Much love,
Nathan Cottam
Director–Mannakin Theater & Dance
Cultivating Ballet Culture is about bringing quality ballet training to neighborhoods where the opportunities are hard to find.
Residents of low-income communities face two obstacles to participation in the world of ballet, cost and proximity. A quality ballet education can easily cost $600 per month—making raw expense the most obvious barrier to underserved families. The second barrier of proximity, while related, is distinct. Ballet studios locate their facilities near their upper class clientele, making them inconvenient to underserved neighborhoods. Therefore, even a family that can manage the expense is often barred by factors of travel time, work schedules and traffic congestion. Because quality ballet training is available almost exclusively in privately operated dance studios, growing up in an underserved community means growing up outside the influence of ballet.
But it’s not only the child that suffers. Ballet studios provide much more than an empty room to dance; they deeply enrich families and communities that enjoy access to them. Ballet studios can serve as primary threads in the fabric of family life and provide the sole means of participation in one of the most revered forms of art, the world over. They are a culture and community unto themselves, a birthplace of friendships and a forge that steels those bonds through trials, tears and accomplishments. Within a region, dance schools form an extended network with opportunities to interact with other young people engaged in a similar passion.
Cultivating Ballet Culture serves the function of a private dance studio within underserved communities by overcoming the obstacles of cost and proximity. Mannakin Theater & Dance contracts hourly rentals and solicits donations and grants to subsize tuition costs. Families are never turned away due to a lack of funds, and students can often walk to class from home or school.