NORTHERN VIRGINIA SCIENCE CENTER FOUNDATION

Since 2004, the mission and vision of the Children's Science Center has been to inspire a love of learning STEM for all Northern Virginia children and families. We strive every day to deliver meaningful and fun STEM experiences in schools, libraries, community centers across every jurisdiction in our region as well as through our small facility in Fairfax. For tens of thousands of children and their families, attending a program by our team or visiting the Lab in a field-trip may be the only STEM experience they have outside the classroom. Yet, the demand for our programs and capacity limits due to the Lab's size require us to grow into a full-scale science center that can reach over 300,000 visitors annually.

By creating an innovative, world-class science center that sparks the curiosity in all of us, we will also create a vital community resource that can inspire generations of life-long STEM learners. In doing so, we will serve as the catalyst for a robust regional STEM ecosystem in partnership with primary and secondary educators, business and community leaders, families, and the philanthropic community. In 2019, the Science Center reached a significant milestone in this vision with the confirmation of a public-private partnership with the Science Museum of VA to build Northern Virginia's Science Center on donated land in Dulles, VA. The Center's team will continue to inspire thousands today with interactive STEM learning and build tomorrow's innovative and world-class science center that welcomes hundreds of thousands.

The Center is well positioned to meet short term goals based on consistent and growing fundraising capabilities as evidenced in recent years. We continue to benefit from ongoing corporate, foundation and individual support of our mission, vision, short term and long-term objectives. We have also experienced strong earned revenue growth after opening our museum site and offering paid admission and paid programs in addition to scholarship programs for underserved and underrepresented audiences.

As a result of the Center opening its first facility in 2015, the Lab; the professional staff team has expanded to 11 full-time equivalents in marketing, finance, education and programs administration, operations and fundraising. An additional 24 part-time program/content team members manage the seven-day-a-week operations of the Lab and outreach programming.

However, the Center continues to rely on the crucial support of volunteers in all aspects of our operations and in 2019, this included over 650 adult and youth volunteers who donated more than 13,000 hours. This extraordinary cadre of volunteers assist the Center's mission in a variety of ways – alongside staff for operations at the Lab; as outreach educators for 50 Family Science Night events at elementary schools across the region; as STEM-ambassadors for community events including our Summer of Science Celebration held at Fair Oaks Mall and other regional festivals; and in all aspects of the Center's management operations including finance, marketing, fundraising, IT and governance.

Volunteers also serve in a number of advisory and governance roles. The 19-member Board of Directors are a dedicated governing body that advances the organization by setting the long-term strategic direction and monitoring progress towards the Center's goals. The Board upholds its fiduciary responsibility by ensuring donations and revenues are growing, and finances are managed responsibly and ethically. The Center's Advisory Board is comprised of 23 influential community and business leaders who provide periodic strategic and tactical advice to the management team and Board of Directors. The 20-member STEM Advisory Council, which includes master scientists and STEM education specialists, including science coordinators from both Fairfax and Loudoun County public schools systems provide educational advice to ensure accuracy, relevance and impact of the Center's programming.

The Center relies on professional affiliations for networking, identifying best practices, and building community and awareness. These affiliations include the following: Association of Children's Museums (ACM), Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC), American Association of Museums (AAM), and Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP). Locally, the Center is a member to various chambers of commerce (Northern VA, Loudoun and Dulles Regional).

Accomplishments:
- Served 300,000 visitors with interactive STEM experiences since 2010.
- Opened Northern Virginia's first children's science center in 2015, the Children's Science Center Lab.
- Serve 50+ schools across all Northern VA jurisdictions annually. Forty percent of those schools are designated as title I schools served with subsidized programs from contributed support.
- Operated a fiscally sustainable non-profit organization that earns 50% of its revenue through programs and fees and raises 50% through contributed sources annually.
- Confirmed a public-private partnership with the Science Museum of VA (a division of the Commonwealth's Dept of Education) to create Northern Virginia's Science Center.
- Raised 93% of funds needed for capital project as of 4/2022.
- Engaged nationally recognized design team of architects and exhibit design firms to design and build the Northern VA Science Center.
- Built a professional leadership team for the organization with