FUNDRAISING
Funding and Financing: Revenue
Revenue |
Where Does Our Money Come From?
The short answer is you. The longer answer is you.
MMS, a non-profit organization with 501-(C)(3) status, receives no federal or state funding. Unlike parochial schools, we cannot rely on support from our parish or diocese. We rely completely on tuition, fundraising, and charitable gifts for all of our revenue.
Tuition and supply fees make up 55% of our total income, which means the tuition dollars you pay covers only 55% of our costs. When we add childcare revenue (7% of our budget), we inch up to 62%.
Other income and program charges such as field and class trips, lunch, music, and book charges, make up 17% of our total income.
But these program revenues also have expenses associated with them, so they aren't "pure;" they are "flow-through" dollars that do not help us pay salaries or heat the building.
So how do we cover the other 21% of our budget (because we work really hard to always—or almost always—come out even at the end of the year)? Charitable giving and fundraising.
One-fifth of our budget depends on charitable giving, and the biggest part of that picture is Annual Giving.
Every family-- no exceptions-- is required to pay a gift of $650 for each child enrolled in one of our programs. Technically this is part of your tuition, but structuring it as a gift has its advantages, not the least of which is you can use scrip to meet your obligation. In a perfect world, we would love to see families exceed our request for $650 per child; in other words, it would be great if those who could would give more.
Annual Giving is 8% to our over-all budget.
Our annual auction is the next biggest "contributor" to our bottom line. For the past several years, approximately 9% of our over-all budget came from the annual auction and other smaller (much smaller) fundraisers.
Last, but not least, is our Capital Campaign. In previous years, our Capital Campaign, which raised close to $1 million, contributed 4% to our budget. In recent years, pledges have dwindled. We are still in need of funds, and we still have un-named spaces in our classrooms, so let us know if you would like to give a boost to this part of our revenue.
As always, if you have questions regarding school finances, we are happy to speak with you. Please contact either the Head of School, Catharine Calder or Director of Finance, Heidi Burroughs.