SMART DRIVE FOUNDATION

Teens today are busier than ever, with more expectations of all sorts placed upon them. Their time is limited; families, schools and other organizations serving this population continually struggle with the task of fitting everything in. Our consistent experience has been that when we are given the opportunity to present our program to decision makers, they are persuaded to try it, and when they do try us, they find that we are effective and we truly change minds and habits among new teen drivers.

SmartDrive is currently at its limit in time and staffing. Real growth for us can only come through more knowledgeable and persuasive staff members spending more time proactively reaching out to teens, families, schools and communities. This can only be accomplished by our ability to generate significantly more revenue to hire more qualified and committed staff.

1. Continue to successfully serve our existing areas and populations with effective curriculum and innovative approaches to the ever-changing environment for teen drivers. The is our best tool for expansion.

2. Pursue a targeted fundraising plan to provide two years of funding to move the executive Director position form volunteer to paid status, to hire a half-time to full-time grant writer/ fundraiser and to add one or two additional operations personnel.

3. identify a logical strategy for growth in programming and expansion to contiguous geographies, building relationships and implementing programs with schools and additional partner organizations.

4. Set a target date of September 1, 2022 to double to number of "customers served".

SmartDrive can continue providing the programming and service we currently have indefinitely. However, we cannot achieve our goal of growth in the ways stated without finding a few large grants from organizations clearly dedicated to our mission and to the outcomes we can provide. SmartDrive operates on a little less than $200,000 per year. We need to find an additional $150,000 per year to enact the programming described and, ultimately, another $150,000 beyond that to sustain a larger operation. In other words, we need to grow our fundraising achievement from $180,000 per year as it currently is to about $500,000 if we are going to achieve our goals.

It is a tall order and it can only be achieved through the acquisition of significant seed funding from funders with the capacity and motivations to help.

We have created the plan, the job descriptions for the additional positions and we have identified funders that we believe have the capacity and interest to get us started on this route. Importantly, we have received new funding from some influential local foundations that we can point to when going to others.