Dear MCDS Community,
What an extraordinary time we are living through with so much uncertainty and change. One thing is for certain, however--when we closed school in March, we didn't fully appreciate how much our community meant to us until we had to be physically distanced from one another. We are all adjusting to this new reality.
We are reaching out to let you know that while the faculty and staff are working hard to create community and curriculum for our students, the Board is thinking through both the short and long term financial impacts of COVID-19 on our community and the economy. We want to assure you that MCDS is in a solid financial position and we will weather this storm. In this current climate, we are putting aside all other initiatives to focus all fundraising towards indexed tuition and, for the time being, we are suspending fundraising for the endowment through the Step Together campaign.
A strength of MCDS is our diversity and inclusion, and we want to preserve the socioeconomic diversity of our community through this crisis. We anticipate that there will be short-term and long-term effects that will impact all of us differently. If your family is being financially impacted and you are concerned about your ability to afford MCDS, please contact our Director of Indexed Tuition, Keets deGuzman Young (kyoung@mcds.org), to inquire and learn about sliding scale tuition.
Having survived past recessions, we believe that the economy will rebound, but know that the short-term impact is real for families. In 2008, the MCDS Community came together to support one another to avoid families having to make the hard choice of leaving the school. Our community made sure that students and families being significantly impacted by the financial downturn could get short term relief through a specially created reserve for indexed tuition. At this time we don't know the full impact that the novel coronavirus will have on us, but we want to do what we can to support students, teachers, and families.
Many of you have reached out to ask what you can do to help us deal with the current situation. We wanted to highlight some immediate ways that you can help to sustain our community.
Fundraising To Support Current Operations
We have not yet reached our budgetary needs for the 2019-20 school year, and this is where we need your support. If you have already made your Annual Fund commitment, we want to thank you again as this is our core fundraising every year.
In the upcoming weeks the Annual Fund Chairs will be in touch with families who haven't yet made their gift or pledge to the 2019-20 Annual Fund. You may remember that 7% of our annual budget comes from the Annual Fund. To put that in perspective, we spend 14% of our budget directly on indexed tuition, and 68% on faculty and staff salaries and benefits. The generosity of our community in supporting these critical aspects of our fundraising is truly amazing. Now more than ever, we hope that you will do whatever you can, whether it's $5, what you gave last year, or a bit more. The most important thing is that we are all pitching in to support the people, program and place that are MCDS.
Fundraising for Indexed Tuition
The Community Dinner Dance and Online Auction Chairs are busy contingency planning, as, sadly, we will not be able to gather in-person to celebrate our unique and diverse community. The funds raised at the Community Dinner, Online Auction, and Walkathon all support the current year's indexed tuition budget. You'll hear more from the auction team in the coming weeks about our online auction and paddle raise.
As we stated above, we are putting aside all other initiatives to focus all fundraising towards indexed tuition.
Fundraising For Long Term
The Development Planning Committee of the Board will suspend active fundraising for the endowment and reserves through the Step Together campaign until 2020-21, to focus on the here and now. We hope to be able to resume those efforts next year.
If your family has multi-year commitments to the School and you need to adjust your payment schedule, please contact Ellen McGlynn (emcglynn@mcds.org) in the Development Office to discuss a plan. The vision for the long-term health of the School funded by the Step Together campaign continues to be a most important initiative, but in the near term, we want to focus on our current students, families, and teachers.
We are so grateful to be partners with all of you in this remarkable school community. Best wishes to you and yours for safety and health.
Sincerely,
marin country day school 5221 Paradise Drive • Corte Madera CA • 94925 To unsubscribe from future emails, click here. |