By Sarah Piper Pollock

Today, I’m feeling grateful that I’m not alone on this big planet. 

One of my favorite movie lines of all time is from Contact. The scene starts out with a young daughter and her dad sitting on the porch looking at the stars. The daughter asks, “Dad, do you think there’s people on other planets?” 

He turns to her and says, “I don’t know, Sparks. But I guess I’d say, if it is just us…seems like an awful waste of space.” 

Sure, the movie was talking about aliens, but what I’ve always taken away from that scene is the importance of community.

Springhouse would not be entering into its ninth year if we did not deeply practice building beloved community. Building beloved community is one of the Sourced Design principles, designed and practiced by Springhouse. 

Building beloved community means knowing that we have a direct impact on others – that our choices, words, and actions create ripples in the future to the earth, plants, animals, our friends and family, and those we have yet to meet. 

Our generative economic model is a practice ground for building beloved community. The resources any one person can provide cannot support the whole alone. Contributions of physical, human, and financial resources as well as mindful attention from all members of the community create our economy. 

As Wendell Berry said, “A good community insures itself by trust, by good faith and good will, by mutual help. A good community, in other words, is a good local economy.”

Thank goodness we are not alone, surrounded and supported by others. Because if we were just here alone, it would be an awful waste of space. 

Transparency 

One of the pillars of our economic model is transparency. We value transparency as an integral way to build relationships and trust. We share transparently about what Springhouse gives, what Springhouse needs to support our offerings and growing community, as well as our budget. 

Quarterly, Springhouse shares transparently about our resources in terms of the people that support us, the physical resources we have, and the money we spend and receive. These resources, along with mindful attention or prayer, help us continue to carry out our mighty vision of building regenerative culture. 

People: Relationships (August 2021 to date) 

Volunteers: 30 

Adult Program Participants: 175

Day School Learners: 35

Coming of Age Program Participants: 8 

Physical Resources: Place-Based (August 2021 to date)  

Big thank you to Deb Tome for donating beekeeping equipment and two hives! 

Financial Resources: Money (August 2021 to date)

We are close to wrapping up our fiscal year, which means we’ve been taking a closer look at our budget. In the spirit of transparency, here are some highlights of our budget at this time: 

  • Day School: We budgeted $145,000 and had confirmed that we would meet that amount at the beginning of the year through investment contract estimates. Some families have altered their original investment amounts, and we are now looking at a shortage of $9,919. Currently we’ve received $100,897.96 out of the $145,000. The $145,000 is 40% of our revenue for this fiscal year ($366,062). 
  • Fundraising: We’ve raised $51,357 out of our budget goal of $117,532. Fundraising is 32% of our revenue for the fiscal year budget. Give Local in June is our biggest fundraising month, and it takes participation from everyone in our community! 
  • Adult Programs: We’ve received $10,676.39 out of our budget goal of $14k. Adult programs fill in 7% of our programming revenue budget.   
  • Youth Programs: $291.08 received out of our budget goal for Coming of Age and Homeschooling Programs of $7,700. 
  • Grants: Our overall goal of $60,500 has been met as we’ve received a series of grants written by Jenny, Sarah, and Chris in total of $70,795. 
    • Loretto Literary & Benevolent Institute $500, written by Sarah
    • The Kallipoeia Foundation granted us $35,000 for our adult programming needs. Grant was written by Jenny. 
    • We received $20,000 from the Margulf Foundation to support our day school programming.
    • Jenny wrote and received a $10,000 grant from the VELA Education Fund. 
    • CERC supported the staff in the Our Whole Lives training with a grant of $3,295.
    • Chris wrote and received a grant from the CFNRV of $2,000. 
  • Fellowship: We budgeted $6,000 in our fellowship budget line and have received $3,450. We are looking at a shortage of $1,400.  
  • Sourced Design Immersion: We’ve reached our goal of $8,500 and have received $13,355 total this fiscal year.

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