Fifteen years, and the lamp still works.

In 2011 I quit a job I was good at because I could not stand one more meeting about a kid who was fine on paper and not fine in the hallway. Gus had a garage. We had six kids and a lamp. I do not recommend starting a nonprofit this way, but I do recommend the lamp.

This year STENCH served 1,240 kids across six sites. That is the largest number we have ever posted and it is 611 short of the number who wanted a seat. I want to start there, because a letter that begins with the good number and mentions the waitlist in the last paragraph is a letter written for donors instead of families.

What worked

The Cully site. We rebuilt the HVAC, added a quiet room, and hired a kitchen lead who has turned snack into the most popular hour of the day. Attendance at Cully went from 81% to 93%. The building was always fine. The air was not, and it took us two years to admit that.

Teen leadership. Eighteen paid apprentices, 94% retention, and a waiting list of kids who want to teach. The first cohort's oldest member is now a program assistant at Lents. I have watched her correct a room of eleven-year-olds with more skill than I had at thirty.

The Nothing program. Still full, still voluntary, still impossible to explain in a grant application. We now have four years of survey data suggesting it is associated with the largest gains in 'I can keep going when something is hard.' I am not going to overclaim. I am going to keep the room.

What did not

The waitlist. Six hundred and eleven names. We added 140 seats this year and the list grew by 131, which is the arithmetic of a city changing faster than a nonprofit can lease space. I do not have a comfortable sentence for this. We are opening a seventh site in East Portland in 2027 if the lease and the money come together, and I spend about a third of my week on that.

Staff turnover, at 19%. That is above our target and it is concentrated among part-time program assistants, who are the people closest to kids. Exit interviews pointed at scheduling, not pay. We have changed two schedules. I do not know yet whether it worked.

The February pipe. A burst pipe closed the Montavilla workshop for a week. Families found out late. We now have a text tree and a staff member whose job is to send the first message within an hour. It should not have taken a burst pipe.

The money

Revenue was $3.42 million. We spent $3.36 million, 81% of it on programs, and ended the year with 5.1 months of reserve. We spent $214,000 on an HVAC system that was quoted at $108,000. I approved the second quote in September when we should have approved the first one in June. That is a failure of attention, not of budgeting, and it cost a program's worth of money.

What I keep thinking about

In November a kid walked over the little bridge in the courtyard. Her sentence was: 'This is Hana, who is not afraid of the saw anymore.' She is thirteen. She had been afraid of the saw for two years. Nobody made a big deal of it. She walked over, the bell rang, and she went to get a slice of pizza.

That is the whole thing. Fifteen years, six buildings, 41 staff, 300 volunteers, $3.4 million, and the product is a thirteen-year-old who is not afraid of the saw. If you are reading this because you gave us money, you bought that. Thank you. If you are reading this because you are thinking about enrolling a kid, the door is open and the snack is real.

The lamp is still on the shelf. It still works.

— Yolanda

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