The Multiple Funding Trick

One of the really smart ways to make money is to appeal for funding for an event or a specific expense. And then to appeal elsewhere for the same funding. And, with a bit of luck, to convince the service supplier to waive their fees altogether - leaving you with the entire fundraising pot. Let's go back to the summer, when Yolande Beckles launched her aptly-named Think Global Kids Summer Enrichment Program. Still don't get it? You're misreading the title - the adjective "enrichment" doesn't apply to the noun "kids", it applies to her organisation "Think Global Kids". Aaah! Now you're beginning to get the picture.

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The Enrichment Program was advertised (free of charge, of course) for the sum of $120 per student (with a discount for the low-waged and unemployed). The advertising catch-phrase for the event - Think Global, Act Local - was happily purloined without risk of challenge under intellectual property law, as at least eight individuals lay claim to origination of the phrase. The press release was interesting inasmuch as it displayed what I referred to in an earlier post as "the tell-tale malapropisms and dyslexic markers normally associated with Miss Beckles". Click on the copy to enlarge and spot children being nutured (neutered?) rather than nurtured through a continuos [sic] learning development program becuase [sic] parents are determined to see their children succeed. Yup - that's Yolande, OK.

Of course it would be improper of me to criticise Yolande Beckles merely for her obvious difficulties with grammar and spelling. But I shudder to think how a group of white people would be received if their idea of empowering, motivating, inspiring and facilitating the brilliance of black children included teaching them the skills of sports and rapping. All of this aside, the issue here is finance. Luckily, Hollywood Hills West Neighborhood Committee was able to fund the rental of the Community Room at the Will and Ariel Durant Library for five days in the sum of $1,250, despite rejecting an earlier appeal for $4,500 through the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment due to earlier payments to the same library and financial discrepancies that showed up in audit. So that's the library fees paid by the local council and the parents. What I'd like to find out is whether those fees were eventually charged and paid and, indeed, whether anyone else contributed to the costs of this summer event.